Advertising during news programing is viewed as the most trustworthy, memorable and attention-grabbing of the key TV genres, according to a YouGov survey recently released by ThinkTV.
Survey respondents were asked last month to rate the trustworthiness of news on a scale from one to five, five being the most trustworthy. TV, newspaper and radio news were rated the most trusted at 85%, with more than 50% of viewers giving these the highest trust scores. The other media rated on trust included online news (69%), podcasts (56%) and social media (41%).
TV is the top choice by Canadians for watching national and local news with 60% of Canadians accessing national news content via a TV channel on a weekly or more frequent basis. More than half (58%) access local news weekly via TV, more than any other platform. For those viewing and listening to news daily, 33% watch via a traditional TV channels, 27% view online, 22% listen to news on the radio, 18% read a physical or online newspaper, 16% on a TV broadcast website or app and 6% get their daily news on a podcast.
Not only is news programming on TV widely accessed and trusted by viewers, Canadians also give advertising within news programming their highest attention scores (71%). Canadians are also most likely to trust ads within news programming (71%) while 50% say ads in news content are the most memorable.
As a result, brands advertising in news content experience significant brand lift with 45% of viewers visiting a brand’s website or search for information or reviews about the brands.
Thirty-nine per cent access news on a broadcaster website or app weekly. Local news is accessed daily most often on a traditional TV channel (30%), following by radio (22%), online (20%), a physical or online newspaper (15%), a TV broadcast website or app (14%) or a podcast (5%).
Other findings include that the majority of Canadians (95%) say they they believe Canadian news is important although at the same time 90% are very or somewhat concerned about fake news. That’s an increase of more than 10% since March 2023 with 61% saying they are more concerned about fake news than they were three years ago.
