Trust in Sponsored Content, July 2014 [CHART]

Trust in Sponsored Content, July 2014 [CHART]

Some 54% of internet users aged 18-65 say they generally don’t 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%). That’s according to survey results from Contently, which also found that two-thirds of respondents have at some point felt deceived upon realizing that an article or video they read was sponsored by a brand.

The results bring to mind a study released in late 2012 by MediaBrix, which revealed that a majority of online adults find advertising that appears as content (“native ads”) to be misleading. 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. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.