Digital advertisers haven’t been able to move the needle on digital ad perceptions.
Americans’ trust in the news media is at an all-time low, and our trust in digital advertising hasn’t improved a bit over the past two years either.
According to Tanya Gazdik Irwin in MediaPost, advertisers are not doing enough to fix their credibility problem.
“For a medium that is newer, with lots of room to grow, it is surprising that the trust levels have not grown more,” Irwin notes.
“The fact that it didn’t shows that consumers may not be entirely ‘sold’ on this format, according to the report,” she continues, citing results of Gallup’s most recent Global Trust in Advertising report.
The mistrust of advertising is not consistent across channels.
“Almost half of global respondents say they completely or somewhat trust online video ads (48%, no change from 2013), ads served in search engine results (47%, down one percentage point) and ads on social networks (46%, down two percentage points),” she writes.
“About 4 in 10 global respondents trust online banner ads (42%, no change) and mobile advertising (43%, down two percentage points). Just over one-third say they trust mobile text ads (36%, down one percentage point),” Irwin continues.
Print and other traditional media don’t seem to have the credibility issues that plague digital. Consumers continue to trust print ads. much more than digital, something we’ve been seeing for the past several years.
“Despite continued media fragmentation, the proliferation of online formats has not eroded trust in traditional (offline) paid channels,” Irwin writes. “TV, newspapers and magazines remain trusted advertising formats,” with 62-63% of consumers saying they trust print newspaper and magazine ads.
This trust goes a long way toward explaining why print ads continue to engage.