The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council says most marketing budgets will either hold steady or increase this year, which runs counter to all the recent talk about a possible economic recession.

According to a CMO Council survey of 800 senior marketers, 37.6 percent of annual budgets will not change in 2008, while 33.1% of budgets will increase by up 5%. Nearly 10% of marketing budgets will grow between 6- and 10%.

Last year the majority of global marketers (52.6%) had budgets that equaled less than 4% of revenue and 35.4% indicated they spent the equivalent of 4- to 10% of revenue on marketing.

With respect to marketing automation the top areas for planned investment are e-mail campaign management, customer relationship management, marketing performance measurement, customer intelligence, search engine marketing and tools for sales and marketing integration.