Interpreting Nielsen

Nielsen recently released results of their trusted advertising survey. Search Engine Watch reported that the results say that the public doesn’t really trust search ads.

Okay, as a search engine marketer I get that. We have all had the experience of trying to explain just what Search Engine Marketing is. And even when you bring it down to paid search (the easy bit to explain), people are still surprised that those things on Google are ads, and that people pay for you to click on it.

So when you survey the population about what they trust … what are they going to pick? The same way they pick people in elections, by former knowledge of the name. People know newspapers and other people. Same thing with magazines. Those are high touch and have been trustworthy in the past.

Do I think search ads are less trustworthy? No, but I know more than the average Joe about Quality Score and it’s determination on what ads show and what ads don’t show. It’s going to take some time to get people to get that not all online advertising is annoying … this industry is still very young.