The brand rub effect that comes with advertising in trusted environments has always been a compelling argument used by publishers to entice advertisers, something which new research from effectiveness guru, Peter Field, highlights is more important than ever.

Published this month by Newsworks, the study based on Field’s analysis of the IPA Databank highlights how trust and quality are now the two most important brand metrics when it comes to profit growth and provides a clear link between these important metrics and newsbrands.

These two metrics have always been important for advertisers and brands to consider but the divergence of societal factors and new media channels has led to a ‘trust crisis’ which has spearheaded these two metrics to the forefront of the effectiveness conversation.

Be it Partygate, the Met Police scandals or unregulated online content, the fake news cycle as well as the failures of institutions like the Government has eroded trust at all levels. As a result, knowing we can rely on trusted environments like newsbrands is vital for consumers and for advertisers in a world where misinformation continues to pervade society.

Over the past decade this link between trust in newsbrands and advertiser profit growth has risen sharply. Campaigns using newsbrands between 2012-2016 had an uplift in overall effectiveness of 32% compared to campaigns that did not. This uplift was even stronger between 2018-2022, showing an uplift in effectiveness of 52%. When it comes to the impact on profit, this rise has been even sharper with advertisers using newsbrands seeing an uplift in profit of 88% between 2018-2022- a noticeable increase from the 24% uplift in profit in the five years prior.

2016 was also arguably the time that the ‘trust crisis’ began to explode with things like the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Brexit and Trump all coinciding with this increased effectiveness of campaigns using trusted, quality newsbrand environments.

Drilling down further into the role of newsbrands, the research also highlighted that brands who benefited from the greatest uplifts used a combination of print and digital touchpoints, further cementing what we already know about cross platform campaigns tending to drive greater levels of effectiveness.

Summarising the research, Field noted that “trust and quality perceptions are interconnected as vital brand metrics, and their importance to advertisers has doubled over the last 20 years.”

With the Sun and Times boasting record monthly reach figures, this puts us in a great position to offer advertisers real scale in environments we know deliver the trust and quality credentials which will drive profit for our advertisers. Marketers are scrutinising such measures closely, giving us another reason to acknowledge the role and relevance of newsbrands in the modern media landscape  especially with our radio offering too which offers advertisers another highly trusted medium.