LONDON: Global marketing activity continued to grow at a steady rate in May according to the latest Global Marketing Index (GMI).

The headline Global Marketing Index remained unchanged from April on 55.1 and represented the continuation of a year-long trend where a flat global index has hidden disparate regional performances.

Activity has been strongest in Europe over that period, although it has declined slightly from a high of 59.2 in March. The trend has been downwards in Asia Pacific where the GMI dipped again this month and fell below that of the Americas, where a rise of 0.4 percentage points represented another small step in recovery from a low point of 51.1 in November of last year.

The Global Marketing Index, compiled by World Economics, provides a unique monthly indicator of the state of the global marketing industry because it tracks current conditions among marketers and their expectations in the three key areas of marketing budgets, trading conditions and staffing levels.

The Index for global marketing budgets remained constant following two successive monthly increases in value; this is now the 39th successive month in which global marketing budgets have grown.

More and more of those budgets are being allocated to digital and mobile, both of whose share grew rapidly in May and rose consistently across all regions.

The resources allocated to TV, however, continued to fall; only in Europe was the index value above 50.0.

And media spending on press, radio and OOH fell across the board in May. Asia Pacific bucked the trend to an extent as the rate of decline of OOH there slowed – the index rose for the fourth successive month to just below the 50.0 no change level.

The Index for global trading conditions, meanwhile, reversed a five-month long sequence of monthly declines. And the Staffing Index, which reflects the number of staff taken on compared to the same period last year, fell slightly in May; by region, Europe was growing more strongly than the Americas or Asia-Pacific.

Data sourced from World Economics; additional content by Warc staff