Impressions and conversions: how can advertisers gain the public’s trust?

Things have come to a pret­ty pass for your pro­fes­sion when research reveals that con­sumers have less faith in its out­put than they do in that of estate agents, jour­nal­ists and even politi­cians. An Ipsos Mori poll in Octo­ber 2020 found that a mere 13% of UK adults trust­ed adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives to be truth­ful, com­pared with 16% in the case of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. 

Pub­lic trust in adver­tis­ing has actu­al­ly increased in absolute terms since hit­ting rock bot­tom sev­en years ago, if stud­ies by the Adver­tis­ing Association’s think-tank, Cre­dos, are any­thing to go by. In 2015 – the industry’s low­est point for cred­i­bil­i­ty on record – its researchers found that 44% of con­sumers trust­ed (to at least some extent) what adver­tis­ers were say­ing. By 2021, the pro­por­tion had risen to 55%. Despite this, all the oth­er indus­tries used by Cre­dos for com­par­a­tive pur­pos­es in its stud­ies saw big­ger improve­ments in trust over the same peri­od, which means that adver­tis­ing has fall­en fur­ther behind the pack.

As the Adver­tis­ing Asso­ci­a­tion admits in the accom­pa­ny­ing research report, Rebuild­ing Pub­lic Trust in UK Adver­tis­ing: “All in all, there is unmis­tak­able evi­dence to show that adver­tis­ing has a clear pub­lic trust prob­lem.”

What is the indus­try get­ting wrong in par­tic­u­lar? And how can con­sumers’ mis­trust of adver­tis­ing, and the brands it’s sell­ing, be addressed?

“There are many rea­sons why trust in adver­tis­ing is so low,” observes Rik Haslam, exec­u­tive cre­ative part­ner at brand con­sul­tan­cy Brand­pie. 

One fac­tor, he says, is some­thing that has in the past made adver­tis­ing so effec­tive: its abil­i­ty to appeal to our lifestyle aspi­ra­tions. As the Covid cri­sis drags on and war rages in Europe once again, the UK econ­o­my is unlike­ly to be recov­er­ing from the shock of the pan­dem­ic at the pace that many had hoped for. With infla­tion tak­ing hold, life isn’t look­ing as rosy to Britons as the ad men and women would have us believe. Glossy adverts that hint at a utopi­an future for buy­ers of a giv­en brand are unlike­ly to find a recep­tive audi­ence among the mil­lions of peo­ple who’ve start­ed wor­ry­ing about how to make ends meet as the costs of essen­tials such as food, fuel and ener­gy spi­ral.

Anoth­er devel­op­ment that’s been instru­men­tal in erod­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty is the fact that con­sumers are being tracked more than ever online by adver­tis­ers, which are bom­bard­ing them with what Haslam calls low­est-com­mon-denom­i­na­tor mes­sag­ing. 

“We’ve been body-shamed, mis-sold to, under-rep­re­sent­ed, spammed and pestered to the point of almost com­plete cyn­i­cism,” he says.

Mis-sell­ing is a seri­ous con­cern, par­tic­u­lar­ly for busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in sec­tors such as finance and health­care, where trust takes decades to accu­mu­late and days to lose. 

“The online adver­tis­ing ecosys­tem is very com­plex, so con­sumers don’t under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing,” notes Robin Karakash, senior mar­ket­ing direc­tor for Europe at Mozil­la, which owns the Fire­fox web brows­er. 

This fac­tor makes them more sus­cep­ti­ble to scams and less like­ly to make the con­nec­tion between the data they divulge and the adver­tis­ing that’s served up to them. That’s a con­cern for busi­ness­es too. For exam­ple, Star­ling Bank has pulled its paid adver­tis­ing from both Face­book and Insta­gram until Meta can demon­strate that it’s doing enough to pre­vent fraud­u­lent ads from appear­ing in users’ social media feeds. 

In a blog post pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, the bank’s founder and CEO, Anne Boden, wrote: “We want to pro­tect our cus­tomers and our brand integri­ty… We can no longer pay to adver­tise on a plat­form along­side scam­mers who are going after the sav­ings of our cus­tomers and those of oth­er banks.”

Meta has stressed that it is “ded­i­cat­ing sig­nif­i­cant resources to tack­ling this indus­try-wide issue on and off our plat­forms”, but it remains to be seen whether such efforts will meet with Boden’s sat­is­fac­tion.

Mean­while, the Adver­tis­ing Asso­ci­a­tion believes that the pro­fes­sion needs to focus on pro­duc­ing more high-qual­i­ty adverts that con­sumers find both enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive. Its CEO, Stephen Wood­ford, says: “The things that dri­ve trust in adver­tis­ing now are the same things that drove trust 30 years ago. Ide­al­ly, all ads should be engag­ing and con­tain some­thing use­ful.” 

But that is far from the case, of course. And the increase in the vol­ume of con­tent that could be count­ed as adver­tis­ing has mud­died the waters. From hyper-tar­get­ed pop-up ads on web­sites to unde­clared adverts by social media influ­encers, so-called sus­pi­cious adver­tis­ing is anoth­er key fac­tor dam­ag­ing the public’s per­cep­tions of the indus­try, accord­ing to Cre­dos. 

The UK has a strin­gent set of adver­tis­ing reg­u­la­tions, but these are not always enforced to the extent that they could be. Chang­ing that could be key to rebuild­ing trust, accord­ing to Wood­ford, who says: “One key attribute we have in the UK indus­try, which is almost like a jew­el in the crown, is the Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Author­i­ty.” 

Mak­ing peo­ple more aware of the author­i­ty and its enforce­ment pow­ers – includ­ing its abil­i­ty to warn influ­encers against enter­ing undis­closed com­mer­cial agree­ments with brands – has a demon­stra­bly pos­i­tive effect on pub­lic trust in the indus­try. 

The Adver­tis­ing Asso­ci­a­tion recent­ly ran a “test cam­paign to pro­mote the fact that the Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Author­i­ty reg­u­lates adver­tis­ing every­where you see it”, Wood­ford explains. Researchers sur­veyed the tar­get audi­ence and found that its aver­age lev­el of trust in the indus­try had risen by 50% after view­ing the cam­paign. 

“When you know that there’s a police­man present, you’re reas­sured that some­one is there check­ing,” he says. “If you know that you can com­plain to an author­i­ty that will enforce com­pli­ance with the rules, you feel much more secure.” 

While such knowl­edge gives rea­son for opti­mism about the future of adver­tis­ing, the indus­try has much work to do, stress­es Haslam, who sug­gests that many com­pa­nies need to review their prac­tices. The rise of big-data ana­lyt­ics has made the indus­try a duller place. It’s time to restore some much-need­ed cre­ativ­i­ty and per­son­al­i­ty to its out­put, he argues, echo­ing Woodford’s assess­ment.

“Brands need to play a pos­i­tive role in soci­ety to regain the con­fi­dence of con­sumers. We all like an ad that enter­tains us,” Haslam says, rec­om­mend­ing that they try to chan­nel the quick wit of an advert for The Econ­o­mist or the “bizarre whim­sy” of the Cock­ney gecko cam­paign used by US car insur­er Geico. 

If dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing doesn’t learn how to engage audi­ences in such a way soon, “it will become ever more annoy­ing and erode trust fur­ther”, he argues, adding that com­pa­nies also need to be more pur­pose­ful in their choice of media. 

“Pro­gram­mat­ic adver­tis­ing is incred­i­bly effi­cient, but it’s also incred­i­bly opaque. It can dam­age the rep­u­ta­tion of your brand if it is placed in unsavoury, inap­pro­pri­ate or unsuit­able con­texts,” Haslam warns. “On the oth­er hand, show­ing up in cred­i­ble, trust­ed envi­ron­ments can help to cre­ate pos­i­tive asso­ci­a­tions for your brand. With this in mind, try to avoid the temp­ta­tion to drown con­sumers in a del­uge of cheap ads. Be more con­sid­ered in how you take your brand to mar­ket.” 

If the indus­try as a whole can fol­low those prin­ci­ples, there’s a good chance that it can creep up the league table of con­sumer trust. Becom­ing more cred­i­ble than a politi­cian isn’t too much to ask, sure­ly?