The majority of consumers feel that they are being spammed by brands online, with 75% adding that they would boycott their product or services as a result. The Ad-Rank Media survey of over 1000 internet users, 60% of respondents said that they encountered what they regarded as spam content on websites, blogs and forums every […]
The majority of consumers feel that they are being spammed by brands online, with 75% adding that they would boycott their product or services as a result.
The Ad-Rank Media survey of over 1000 internet users, 60% of respondents said that they encountered what they regarded as spam content on websites, blogs and forums every day. At the same time, 72% felt that they had been spammed directly by a brand.
Strikingly, the research also showed that a staggering 75% of people felt that irrelevant advertising can irritate them so much that they will go as far as boycotting a product or service in order to avoid it.
“Targeting consumers with relevant, useful content has never been more important,” said Ad-Rank Media’s managing director, Chad Harwood – Jones, commenting on the findings. “With so much information available online, brands need to build trust.”
Interestingly, 90% of respondents said that they use online content to help them decide on purchases, clearly highlighting that information that does not fit the needs of consumers will have a negative effect on not only sales, but brand perception.
However, at the same time 70% felt that the overall quality of content online has improved in recent years – a number that perhaps reflects the huge strides that search engines such as Google have made in cracking down on poor quality content.
Meanwhile 80% of those surveyed said that they felt they trust Google to display the most relevant content in their search results, and this is again likely due to Google’s ever evolving spam-filtering algorithm. Websites that have pages of thin or duplicate content have increasingly ranked lower in search results, leaving more quality sites to attract visitors in greater numbers.
“I suspect that when most people think of spam, they think of junk emails,” Harwood – Jones continued. “However the rise of social spamming is a more recent trend, and as the internet evolves businesses will always seek to take advantage of new channels and platforms to reach large numbers of people at relevantly low costs, especially compared to paid-for advertising such as Google Adwords.”
“Also 90% of users surveyed said that they felt Google was either improving as a search engine or maintaining its high standards, so while tailored social advertising may be missing the mark, Google and other search engines are providing a better experience.”
Read the research here
