Digital budgets fell into decline for the first time in April

An overview of the growth and decline of marketing budgets by medium in 2020 in the face of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak dragged digital budgets into decline for the first time ever in April 2020, according to data from WARC's latest Global Marketing Index (GMI).

Developed by WARC, the GMI is a monthly indicator of the state of the global marketing industry based on current conditions among practitioners. An index value of 50.0 indicates no change, below 50.0 indicates decline and above 50.0 indicates growth.

Digital (excluding mobile) recorded an index value of 42.6 in April, a steep change from the growth seen in March (53.9). Mobile marketing budgets also reached a new low, dropping...

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