Proving the value of trust

Opinion

Last week, at its parliamentary reception, the Advertising Association’s president, Andria Vidler, delivered her centenary address:

“A hundred years on from the founding of the Advertising Association, we’ve been reflecting on trust in advertising as the guiding principle of this organisation and its members. 

We’re in a fortunate position today compared to our founders in 1926, in terms of our access to technology, research and skills.

This industry has grown from just 300,000 businesses using advertising 25 years ago, to 3.6m using it today – to help them compete, innovate and grow.

However, we also face a much more complex task than our founders did, in a fragmented market driven by more tech, more data and more capabilities than ever before.

So, to mark our Centenary, we are doubling down on the AA’s founding principles of building people’s confidence and trust in advertising.

We have the wind in our sails – trust in advertising is at a five-year high

But we also know that trust is fragile and there are always challenges to navigate.

To keep trust rising, we have a vision for an industry that makes ads which are more responsible, more welcome in people’s lives and therefore more effective investments for advertisers.

Building trust is especially important now, as our industry and the businesses it serves deploy AI and reinvent much of how we work. 

Alongside this, the public is using AI to make choices at an accelerating rate. The Gen AI growth curve is the fastest technology adoption rate the world has ever seen. 

Mobile phones took 16 years to reach 100m users. The internet took seven years, Facebook took 4.5 years, and TikTok took nine months to reach the same milestone 

ChatGPT did it in just two months.

We believe we are now seeing a shift from the ‘Attention Economy’ to the ‘Trust Economy’. One where the advertiser that wins will be the one that builds and reinforces trust in every aspect of what it offers. 

In fact, I believe that trust is the critical KPI that underpins all other KPIs. 

Favourability builds trust. Reliability builds trust. Positive customer experience builds trust. Advertising that is welcome and engaging builds trust. 

And higher trust helps build shareholder value. Trusted brands grow faster, are more able to command price premiums and can keep customers loyal.

This shift to a Trust Economy means treating Trust not as a soft measure, but as a hard commercial metric – the King of KPIs if you will – that is central to business success.

So, what can we do, as the AA, to help keep trust in advertising rising? 

Firstly, we can continue working with the ASA to ensure the public are aware that advertising is well-regulated, wherever it appears. 

Thanks to the generous support of the leading media owners, the ASA awareness campaign has been a major contributor to the recent rise in public trust.

Secondly, we will build a clear and compelling business case for trust.

The world’s most robust and rigorous research on advertising effectiveness – the IPA Awards Databank – is just one of the pieces of evidence that shows this clearly.

We’ll distil and disseminate the learnings from this and many other sources, to help the industry make work that drives trust as the norm, not the exception.

Thirdly, we can raise the profile of the DCMS Online Advertising Taskforce within the industry. 

This innovative and impactful programme between DCMS and industry working groups is dedicated to improving transparency, accountability and trust in online advertising and, in particular, protecting children and reducing online harms.

We’ve spent years treating trust as a soft metric to help defend brand reputations. 

In our Centenary year, I want us to change the conversation and start treating trust as the ‘effectiveness accelerator’ that it is.

Advertising that builds trust must be central to every brief and be valued as the best work that our industry offers. That way, we believe advertising will thrive and drive business growth even more powerfully over the next 100 years.” 

Andria Vidler is the CEO of Allwyn UK and The National Lottery