There is a very interesting study being referenced on emarketer.com about how consumers don’t necessarily trust the Internet, as compared to traditional media, when it comes to news information but they do trust the Internet to research product information, once they’ve decided they are in the market to buy something.
Here’s what the research says about consumers’ trust for news and information:
“More than 45% of respondents in North America, including nearly 50% of female respondents, said they trusted television the most for news and information, followed by newspapers and then radio. Only one in eight respondents selected online news sources as most trusted.”
Yet, when consumers do research for a product or service they are considering for purchase, the Internet has the greatest influence.
Surprisingly, a newspaper ad had the least amount of influence on consumers’ research for a product.
My guess is that this is more a question about how much information they can gain from different media types. Newspaper ads just don’t have enough information in them to persuade a consumer to buy one product over another.
To me this research argues for a brand to have great information online and reference to it from traditional media. Just as a dealer always puts his address and phone number in an ad, they should also automatically put a link to a landing page that better explains the ad offer to a consumer. That’s the best of both worlds and can easily be accomplished in a modern ad builder.