Americans Deem Ad Biz More Trustworthy Than Media, Both Trail All Other Industries

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, August 2, 2022

The good news is that as far as brands go, the ad industry is deemed more trustworthy than much of the media it buys to reach consumers. The bad news is that the ad business, "news media," and "social media" all rank at the bottom of all brand categories American consumers were asked to rate as trusting "a great deal" recently.

The findings, which were announced Tuesday via a press release from brand researcher Brand Keys noting that "media brand trust took a nosedive" in its most recent tracking study, which surveyed 6,850 U.S. adults in July.

"Consumers [are] three times more likely to trust their shampoo brand than news media," the releases subhead noted.

And while shampoo was not broken out as a category, 30% of Americans have a great deal of trust in the beauty/personal care category, which ranked ninth in trust among the 21 categories shown in the report.

Technology ranks No. 1, with 40% of Americans saying the trust it a great deal, followed by entertainment (39%), telecommunications (38%) and luxury goods (36%).

At the bottom, social media ranks worst, with 8% of Americans trusting it a great deal, followed by news media (10%), government (11%) and advertising (13%).

“Because trust is central to consumer behavior and brand profitability, we were curious to see precisely where News Media and TV News brands rated when it comes to the value of ‘trust,'" says Brand Keys Founder and President Robert Passikoff, noting that the curiosity was piqued by the 11th wave of an ongoing tracking study Brand Keys has been conducting for MediaPost about news media brands.

"News media doesn’t fare well generally, with TV news ranking third with only a 6% 'Trust A Great Deal' rating," Passikoff notes, adding that radio performed best (14%) and newspapers (11%) in between the news media outlets.

"All the TV news brands saw drops in viewer trust with virtually no differences among the TV brands by gender or political persuasion," he explains.

2 comments about "Americans Deem Ad Biz More Trustworthy Than Media, Both Trail All Other Industries".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 4, 2022 at 10:27 a.m.
These types of studies may be interesting, trend-wise but they do not necessarily reflect what people actually do. For example, TV "news" ranks very poorly as being "trustworthy", yet TV news continuous to be among the top three categories of most watched program types. Moreover, TV news ---especially cable news but also the local station reports---are still major moneymakers. Carrying the discussion to other low trust categories, used car salesmen usually rate at the bottom of the rankings but each year people buy 38-40 million used cars and light vehicles from them. And politicians also rate pretty poorly on the same scale yet millions of Americans vote for them in every election---the last presidental election vote count rising to all-time highs.
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Andrew Susman from New Value Associates, LLC replied, August 4, 2022 at 5:12 p.m.

That is true, Ed. It is true that people buy/do a lot of products they don't trust e.g. fentanyl, junk food, gambling, cigarettes, and certain forms of toxic media. Those products are among the most commercially successful, This does not imply that reform is not possible, desirable, or likely since the economic system does not exist in a vacuum but is undergirded by social license and overarched by the government.