Google is hardly a typical media company despite making the vast majority of its revenue from advertising. In the past, it’s had a rather tense relationship with old media companies and traditional advertising outlets. The strategy seems to have paid off, judging by its success so far, but in recent years Google is using a softer tone and trying to work more with the establishment. In its latest peace offering, the company has pledged an unspecified amount to an initiative by the Advertising Association in the UK to rebuild public trust in advertising and advertisers, not exactly an easy task.
Advertisers are right to be worried, a recent study commissioned by the association found that under 15 percent of adults in the UK trust advertising. Some might say that this is generally a good thing and a healthy amount of skepticism is more than welcomed in a world where everyone is trying to sell you something.
Now, apart from the effect this has on the efficiency of the campaigns themselves, advertisers are even more worried that this would lead to harsher government regulation, the last thing they want. To be fair, more often than not, strict rules create more problems than they solve and the public should be trusted to be able to make its own decisions and judgments, despite countless evidence t… (read more)