Annual Review 2022: Tracking Trust In Our Advertising Industry

James Best, Chair, Credos

Tracking and understanding the public’s trust of, and favourability towards, advertising continues. It is critical to how the public perceive our industry and, as former Advertising Association President, Keith Weed, said: too little trust and we risk the campaigns we run, and the products and services we promote, failing to resonate with our audiences.

We know levels of trust and favourability towards advertising in general have remained stable recently. Favourability towards advertising, in particular, has recovered steadily since its lowest point in 2016, but data for 2022 suggests this has now plateaued.

Of the industries and institutions tracked by Credos in our 2022 trust data, the advertising industry remains the least trusted, followed by Government, the media and energy industries. However, levels of public distrust are higher, for example, in Government than advertising.

The most striking aspect of public attitudes toward advertising is the difference by age. Over 40% of under-34s trust advertising, whereas under 20% of over-55s do. This is unlike any other institution or industry we track. Unsurprisingly, the younger population is far more trusting of online media and advertising such as influencers and podcasts, which are held in great suspicion by older people. The same divergence of views between the generations is apparent in levels of concern about advertised categories and belief in the effectiveness of ad-regulation. Younger people are generally more positive and more confident about the advertising they experience than their elders.

We saw more brands making environmental claims in 2022 and our trust data tells us 43% of consumers are concerned about them. However, over a quarter of people believe adverts help them make sustainable purchases. Work through initiatives such as Ad Net Zero and its drive to use advertising’s power to encourage people to choose more sustainable products, services and behaviours, has long-term importance.

In parallel, the industry’s regulator, the ASA, has issued new guidance and some stricter judgements on misleading environmental claims and ‘greenwashing’.

Looking at promoted categories, we have seen cryptocurrency advertising emerge as the least favourable category of advertising, superseding gambling; both areas have received particular focus in 2022 from the ASA.

Rebuilding public trust in advertising is a critical mission; we must deploy all the tools in our armoury.

Results show the public responded well to the test campaign for the ASA in Scotland in 2021, so in its 60th anniversary year, the association and its members helped the ASA roll out the campaign nationally, featuring hero figures from famous brands appearing in media space all over the UK.

We also know that the public respond well to brilliant and creative ads. With that in mind, we continued our project The Works for a second year, celebrating brilliant campaigns from Aldi to Marmite and unpicking the learnings specific to each media channel to share with advertisers and their partners.

As ever, there is more to learn and understand about the public’s relationship with advertising. This spring, we will be rerunning our in-depth trust research and updating our insights on the drivers, positive and negative, of public trust.

Will suspicious advertising – misleading, fraudulent, or dishonest ads – see an increase given the rising cost-of-living pressures? We talk more about our working group later in this chapter. Will creativity quality retain its top spot as the biggest single driver of trust? How important to the UK public is the social contribution that advertising makes?

We look forward to updating you in the spring.

You can download our full 2022 Annual Review here.