Marketers to shift budget focus in 2024

6 in 10 marketers will increase their media budgets for 2024, according to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Ebiquity’s “Annual media budgets” survey.

The global study indicated a shift from performance marketing to brand marketing, with 35% of respondents due to increase brand spend in 2024.

Stephan Loerke, CEO at WFA, said the expected uptake in media spend is unsurprisingly leaning into the digital sphere and brings “cautious optimism” to the industry.

“To enable longer-term digital market growth we have to fix key issues of quality, transparency, responsibility, measurement and, importantly, sustainability,” Loerke said.

The survey added that marketers are expected to increase investment into video advertising, while TV advertising will be decreased for over half of respondents.

Nick Waters, CEO at Ebiquity, said the increased ad spend elicits a confidence that seems contradictory to the current economic climate.

“With advertising typically seen as a two-quarter leading indicator of the wider economy does this signify a recovery coming in mid-2024?” Waters asked.

However, 74% of marketers agree that their budget decisions are still impacted by the current climate, the report added.

The study surveyed 92 global brand representatives with an accumulated annual advertising spend of $50 billion.