Personal Recommendations More Trusted Than Advertising

Personal recommendations and consumer opinions posted online are the most trusted forms of communications, according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey. Over 25,000 respondents from 50 countries participated in the survey.

According to the survey, which is conducted twice yearly, 90% of Internet consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust consumer opinions posted online.

Brand websites, the most trusted form of advertiser-led communications, are also trusted by 70% of the survey respondents. Fortunately for marketers, all forms of advertiser-led advertising, except ads in newspapers, experienced higher levels of trust in this most recent survey.

Brand sponsorship is the marketing category that has seen the most significant increase in trust levels since the Trust in Advertising portion of the survey was initiated in April 2007. Almost two-thirds (64%) of Internet consumers now trust Brand Sponsorships, up from just 49% two years ago.

Significantly, text ads on mobile phones have the lowest trust factor, with less than one-fourth of respondents saying they completely or somewhat trust this form of advertising. This is not going to make the folks at the Mobile Marketing Association happy!

Here’s the ranked order of the results for some degree of trust in the following categories:

1. Recommendations from people known (90%)

2. Consumer opinions posted online (70%)

3. Brand websites (70%)

4. Editorial content {e.g. newspaper articles} (69%)

5. Brand sponsorships (64%)

6. Television (62%)

7. Newspapers (61%)

8. Magazines (59%)

9. Billboards / outdoor advertising (55%)

10. Radio (55%)

11. Emails signed up for (54%)

12. Ads before movies (52%)

13. Search engine results ads (41%)

14. Online video ads (37%)

15. Online banner ads (33%)

16. Text ads on mobile phones (24%)

Trust in Advertising: Traditional Media Outrank Internet Ads

Nielsen conducted an online survey of more than 26,000 consumers and respondents provided their perceptions of different forms of advertising. These consumers rated Internet advertising at the bottom when it comes to trust as compared to offline media.

63% responded that they trusted newspaper ads, while 56% trusted television advertising and magazine ads. Both scores were significantly higher than search ads (trusted by only 34%) and banner ads (trusted by a meager 26%).

The respondents in this survey rated the trustworthiness of print and TV ads at over twice the level of banner ads!

Internet advertising may be the wave of the future, as all the pundits like to predict, but the creative execution and messaging of Internet advertising has a long way to go in terms of being trusted by consumers across the globe.

These results also mean that a solid, brand-based Internet advertising campaign will easily stand out amongst the plethora of promotions and high questionable pop-up ads proliferating the web space today.