By Lee Ann Atwater D eclining consumer trust in reliable content on social media is causing advertisers to rethink where they put their advertising dollars in the future as some are looking to pull their advertising from social media providers unless things change and change fast. This was the message delivered by Unileve’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Desert, California. Unilever which owns brands including Dove, Lipton and Ben & Jerry’s is one of the world’s biggest advertisers spending more than two billion US dollars a year on online advertising. Weed said fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, and toxic content directed at children are major reasons that trust in social media is at an all-time low and why the company has threatened to pull ads from major platforms such as Facebook and Google unless these social medial platforms make major changes to filter out misinfor- mation and abusive content for its users. Weed said it is “acutely clear” that “People are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of digital on well-being, on democracy and on truth itself.” He said, “This is not something that can be brushed aside or ignored.” In the 2018 Edelman Intelligence’s “Trust Barometer” which is the global communica- tions firm’s 18th annual trust and credibility survey. The online survey, conducted last fall, included 1,500 Canadian respondents over the age of 18, with 200 of them considered to be “informed public respondents” who pay attention to news and public affairs ranked their trust in journalism substantially higher than their trust of social media platforms. 60 percent of those surveyed say they are unable to distinguish between false reporting and objective journalism. The Edelman report found that trust in social media has been steadily declining, since its peak at 40 percent in 2012. These messages are being heard loud and clear by online platforms like Facebook, who recently announced they are making changes to their newsfeed as they realize that they need to take steps to regain the trust of their users and the faith of their advertisers because without advertising dollars, social media platforms are unsustainable on their own as they are in most cases offered for free to users.
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • FEBRUARY 2018
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