Trust in Sponsored Content Runs Low

If you’re using sponsored content, paid posts, partner stories to promote your products, you might want to think again.

Roughly 54% of internet users aged 18-65 say they largely do not trust sponsored content, with most of the remainder only trusting such content if they trust the publication it runs on (19%) or they already trust the brand (23%), according to survey results from Contently.

The study also found that two-thirds of those surveyed have at some point felt deceived upon realizing that an article they read or a video they watched was sponsored by a brand.

The results are interesting in light of a Polar analysis of data within its native advertising platform suggesting that the more closely aligned a native unit is with the publisher’s content (on a style basis), the better it will perform.

In February, Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile, revealed that only 24% of readers were scrolling down on native ad content on publisher sites, compared to the 71% of readers who scroll on “normal content.”

It was a damning indictment of the quality of sponsored content at large.

A separate survey conducted by Hexagram and Spada found that 8 in 10 publishers and 2 in 3 brands that have used native advertising reported having received no backlash at all to their use of the campaigns.

That is despite almost 6 in 10 respondents to the Contently survey who believe a news site loses credibility if it runs articles sponsored by a brand.

Two-thirds of respondents to the Contently survey said they would not be as likely to click on an article sponsored by a brand as they would to click on editorial content.

A key finding in the Contently study is that while most publishers assume that readers know what it means when a post is abeles “Sponsored Content,” the majority of readers cannot agree on one clear answer.

While a bulk of respondents (48%) believe that “Sponsored Content” means that an advertiser paid for the article to be created and had influence on the article’s content, more than half (52%) thought it means something different.

But that’s not where the confusion ends.  Some of the most striking revelations include:

  • Two-thirds of readers have felt deceived upon realizing than an article or video was sponsored by a brand;
  • 54% of readers do not trust sponsored content;
  • 59% of readers believe a news site loses credibility if it runs articles sponsored by a brand;
  • As education level increases, so does mistrust of sponsored content; and
  • Respondents rated branded content as more trustworthy than Fox News, and nearly equally as trustworthy as MSNBC, indicating that content has a mistrust problem overall.

Even if readers do not understand what branded content means, do they prefer it to the often scorned banner ad?  The answer may surprise you if you work in digital media.

More than half (57%) of readers said that they would prefer that their favorite blogs and news sites run banner ads instead of sponsored articles.

In a ranking of perceived quality, respondents ranked articles in print newspapers and print magazines as having the highest quality, followed in descending order by:

  • articles on a news website;
  • advertorials in a printed magazine;
  • sponsored articles on a news website;
  • articles on a brand’s website; and
  • blog posts by mommy bloggers.

None of this means that sponsored content is “dead in the water,” it just means that it is time to get it right.

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