WebProNews

Consumer-generated content is by far a more trusted form of advertising worldwide than search engine ads, banner ads, or text ads, according to Nielsen, and is trusted almost as much as physical word-of-mouth.

Also interesting from the biannual survey of nearly 25,000 Internet users, is that Asian markets tend to be the most trusting of advertising in general, while Eastern Europe and Scandinavians tend to be less trusting.

Overall, consumer recommendations are the most trusted, earning 78 percent of respondents' trust, followed by newspapers at 63 percent, consumer opinions posted online at 61 percent, and brand websites at 60 percent.

Television, radio, and magazines are virtually tied, with radio being slightly less trusted than the other two. Nearly all of the advertising respondents found the least trustworthy (below 50 percent) were digital forms:

Brand sponsorships – 49%
Email I signed up for – 49%
Ads before movies – 38%
Search ads – 34%
Online banners – 26%
Mobile text ads – 18%

People from the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Taiwan were the most trusting of all forms advertising, while people from Latvia, Germany, Lithuania, Italy, and Denmark were the least trusting.

North America scored highest in trust of consumer-generated media, such as blogs, with 66 percent trusting them. But in individual markets, South Korea and Taiwan trusted blogs the most with 81 percent and 76 percent respectively. Finland trusts blogs the least. Only 35 percent said they did so.