Do people trust SEM ads and blogs?
According to recent research conducted by Nielsen, people’s trust of online advertising is significantly below that of more “traditional” media.
“And even though new media technologies are playing a role in ‘globalizing’ society, many purchasing decisions are still based on firmly held national and cultural attitudes.”
Search engine ads rank just below ads before movies and quite a bit above banner ads and text ads on mobile phones. Meanwhile, blogs evoke significant consumer trust.
Should this concern search engine advertisers? No. It strikes us as very unlikely that significant trust will ever be given over to advertisements that must convey messages in a dozen or so words. More importantly — and very much unlike most forms of traditional advertising — we can directly measure SEM effectiveness and thus justify its use, often to the point of determining break-even CPC’s.
If blogs are imbued with significant consumer trust, this increases their branding value. Blogs have many technological, SEO, and ease-of-management benefits; this research increases their potential value even more.
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