It's official, for now...people trust newspaper ads more than they trust the ads they see in search engines courtesy of Google Adwords and the like, according to a study of marketing and advertising by Nielsen. At first I thought "Man, that's surprising...and it stinks" but now that I think about it, yeah, I also trust newspapers ads more than pay per click ads in search engines.

Think about it, how many ridiculous ads do you see come up in search engines? Go do a search for just about anything and you'll pull up a bunch of ads, the majority of which you would never be the least bit inclined to search on. There are certain searches that will pull up ads that are more credible than others ("CRM software" vs. "herbal supplements" for example), but by and large I don't trust the ads and rarely click on them myself. Like most people, I trust the natural or organic search results more than a paid ad that I know very well anyone can put up there.

On the other hand, when it comes to newspapers I know that not just anyone can fork over the dough for a full-page newspaper ad, and that's what makes the newspaper ad more trustworthy for me. I figure there's more likely to be a real company behind it. With a search engine ad, it could be any joe-schmoe.

But here's the thing--none of this matters. Sure, I thought the same thing you did "Hmm, maybe people seeing this will move their ad dollars into newspaper instead of online ads and that's bad news for Google and us search engine marketing consultant types" but the thing is that whether or not an ad medium is trusted isn't the point. In the end it's all about ROI and objectives. Is the marketing guy with $5K in his budget going to spend that on advertising in a newspaper or online? It all depends where he's going to get a better return, and while newspaper ads might be more credible, that doesn't necessarily mean that people actually respond to them more often than they respond to search engine ads, or that the age group our marketing guy is targeting even reads newspaper. I mean, if someone is marketing to me they better not be placing ads in newspapers because I only open them perhaps once a year, and that's when I'm ad my wife's grandparents' house waiting for someone to back the car out of the garage and there's a newspaper sitting within arm's reach and it's open to an article that looks halfway interesting and which I can read during the 30 seconds I have to spare. And then there's the issue of whether newspapers will be around in ten years after their customer base dies off. Even when all the newspapers are out of business I'll still say that newspaper ads are more trustworthy, but what good does that information do for anyone?

So yes, newspaper ads are more trustworthy, but whoopdee doo, it doesn't really affect anything. Live it up newspapers and gloat, your time is marked.

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