A report released Monday stated British advertising budgets had been cut for the third consecutive quarter and to the greatest extent since the Sept. 11 attacks.  The Bellwether report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising cited poor sales, rising costs and the growing economic gloom behind the marketing cuts.

“Marketing budgets for the current year were revised down for the third consecutive quarter in Q2, with the rate of decline gathering to a pace not seen since budgets were hit in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in late-2001,” the report said.

“This raises the possibility that marketing spend could fall this year for the first time since the survey began in 2000,” the report’s author Chris Williamson said.

“Even Internet marketing was not immune, seeing the smallest increase in spend for five years.”

Traditional media such as television, press, radio, cinema and outdoor suffered sharp downgrades, with budgets dropping at the fastest rate since the first quarter of 2006.  Read the full article here here