Commentary

Survey Finds 41% Of Consumers Rarely Trust The Ads They're Shown

As Google mulls the idea of adding an ad blocker to Chrome, respondents in a new survey said while they disliked both online and mobile ads, they disliked mobile ads more, perhaps because ads on a tiny screen can be even more disruptive. And of course the phone is a more personal device.

In the survey, conducted by Choozle, a self-service programmatic platform, 41% of respondents said that they rarely trust the ads they’re shown, and 54% believe that less than half the ads they see are accurate.

Are consumers getting used to poor quality advertising? It seems so, since 34% of respondents reported having "negative" feelings toward online digital advertising, 50% reported having "negative" feelings toward mobile ads, and 81% would rather be shown ads on their computer than their smartphone.

The survey identified the top three reasons people dislike online ads: They slow down Web pages (28%); the same ad is shown multiple times, regardless of someone’s interest (26%); and, they take up too much space on a Web page (22%).

Among those polled, 78% said they don’t even know what programmatic advertising is. Of those who claimed to know, only 17% answered correctly. 

That 78% finding seems a bit high. Don’t most people in the digital advertising racket know what programmatic is by now? Even if they don’t know how to explain all the intricacies, and however, even when they do, it’s a rare person who can do it well and in plain English.

Choozle pointed out that not all the findings were negative. Of the consumers that reported liking digital ads, the most common reason was that they were shown ads for products and services that they were interested in or were relevant.

The survey, conducted from April 14-18, polled about 270 consumers to gauge public sentiment of digital advertising and explore user experience vis-à-vis online and mobile ads. Initially, more than 650 people responded to the survey, but 39% were disqualified because they either didn’t own a smartphone, or they used an ad blocker. The latter accounted for 53% of initial respondents.  

1 comment about "Survey Finds 41% Of Consumers Rarely Trust The Ads They're Shown".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 3, 2017 at 10:58 a.m.

    So 3-4% of the respondents correctly defined "programmatic advertising"---which doesn't even exist---as opposed to "programmatic media buying".Amazing! As for the rest, it's just more fodder for the trade press to pump out on a slow news day.

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