How much do consumers trust advertising? Online advertising?

On a previous post we discussed about the importance of friend’s opinions when it comes to the decision-making process prior to buying a product.

The latest research from Nielsen together with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) reveals some insightful information about what consumers’ perception and appreciation of advertising is, across both traditional and non-traditional channels.

According to the global media company, which measured consumer trust in 16 marketing channels including TV, Magazines, Radio, Newspapers, Emails, Online Banner Ads and Textual Ads from mobile phones, expressed that trust in advertising is up: consumers today are more trusting of every marketing channel tracked compared to two years ago, save newspaper advertising, trust in which declined a marginal 3%.

The study disclosed some good news  for online in particularly banner ads. The percentage of global consumers trusting banner ads grew 27% between 2007 and 2009 and the percentage trusting ads in search engine results grew 21% from 2007 to 2009.

A highlighting aspect of the study was the analisis of consumers’ sentiment on key values of advertising. Some of the questions posed by Nielsen included the following:

Does Advertising-

• Increase value for consumers (through competition)
• Promote consumer choice (helping consumers exercise their right to choose)
• Power economic growth (by helping companies succeed)
• Create jobs (through economic growth and as an industry in itself)
• Is the lifeblood of media (funding a diverse, pluralistic media landscape)
• Fund sports and culture (through sponsorship)
• Help make a difference (through public service advertisements)
• Often gets my attention and is entertaining

The results:

A good number of respondents acknowledged that advertising is useful to them personally as they navigate the marketplace with 53% agreeing that by providing information, advertising allows viewers to make better consumer choices. Even more significant, 53% declared advertising gets their attention and find it entertaining.

This means consumers are actually quite aware about the presence of advertising in their lives and in society and some are even thankful ads can actually pay the way for their free content or at least cheaper stuff.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Marketing Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.