The news: 46% of US adults trust print ads more than digital ones, and only 3% favor digital ads, per Hopkins Printing. Fifty-one percent trust both mediums equally.

• 23% view print ads as most trustworthy, followed by TV ads (16%) and search ads (10%). Another 23% said none were trustworthy.
• Respondents said they are most likely to remember physical billboards, ahead of social media ads, in-store signage, and ads on streaming services.

Consumers trust print ads because they feel more legitimate (81%), don’t track online behavior (63%), feel less likely to be fraud (53%), feel less manipulative (46%), and show up in trusted publications (41%).

What it means: As targeting, tracking, and AI-driven personalization become more prevalent and sophisticated, there’s a distinction between what makes advertising efficient for marketers and what makes it credible to consumers.

In essence, better targeting doesn’t automatically equal better advertising.

• Digital provides measurement data, attribution, and optimization that is unmatched by print, but some of those same abilities—especially behavioral tracking—are undermining consumer confidence.
• Print’s absence of user identification and personalization adds to its credibility. Consumers know an ad is showing up because of its context, not because their interests and behavior have been tracked.

Recommendations for marketers: Focus on balancing personalization with privacy, push into in-person environments, and invest in physical creative that lends more ad credibility.

• Combine digital targeting with zero- and first-party data and contextual signals to achieve relevance without blatant targeting.
• Work with premium publishers and trusted platforms to complement performance media.
• Use clear, consistent branding and straightforward product claims to help improve trust.

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