• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 9, 2009

Personal recommendations and opinions posted online are the most trusted forms of advertising among Internet users around the world, according to a new study.

Nielsen's latest global online consumer survey, canvassing 25,000 Internet consumers in 50 countries, found that 90% trust recommendations from people they know. The finding bears out the conventional wisdom that people value the views of friends and family above any other source when it comes to buying decisions.

The opinions of others online and brand Web sites were the next most-trusted types of advertising, with 70% having some degree of trust in each. Two years ago, when Nielsen first introduced the "trust in advertising" section of the survey, both sources were trusted by about 60% of users. Given the ascendance of consumer-generated media at that time, Nielsen says advertisers should be encouraged that brand sites still maintain an equal level of credibility.

"Despite the authority of word of mouth when it comes to consumer decision-making, advertisers still have a major say in the process," concluded the media research firm. It noted that past Nielsen studies had shown that most people posting comments online went back to the brand's site or emailed feedback to the company before adding comments. For that reason, it remains a valuable tool for monitoring consumer attitudes.

The biggest change over the last two years in terms of trust was in brand sponsorships -- an area in which Internet users expressing confidence increased from 49% to 64%. The only decline among the media categories tracked by Nielsen was newspaper ads, which dropped by two percentage points to 61%. Just more good news for the newspaper business.

Still, that's a lot better than the level of trust in online and mobile ad formats. Online video ads, banner ads and mobile text ads held the bottom three slots on the trust scale, at 37%, 33% and 24%, respectively. Search ads finished just ahead of video ads, at 41%.

The study suggests that more work is needed to shift advertising from traditional media formats to the Web. "The ability to turn this around rests on overhauling the way display advertising is served online so that it becomes a more effective medium for brand advertisers and a more trusted form of advertising in the mind of the consumer."

Regionally, word of mouth online held the most sway in Vietnam, Italy, China and France -- each at about 80%. Brand sites had the highest level of trust in some of the same countries -- including China, Vietnam and Pakistan, also at about 80%. Sweden and Israel were the least trusting of marketer sites, at 40% and 45%, respectively.

The U.S. ranked 12th in trusting online opinions, and 21st and 22nd among the 50 countries when it came to brand sponsorships and brand sites.