TV significantly more credible than social media, says Screenforce study

For the study, the Insight Institute surveyed over 1,000 people online and 30 people by means of in-depth interviews. Based on the study results, Screenforce Switzerland determined the credibility factor on behalf of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fernsehwerbung Schweiz (AGFS), which means that the findings from the study can also be applied in practice.

In just over 1,000 quantitative online interviews, as well as 30 one-hour in-depth interviews, the Institute asked participants in February and March of this year about the credibility of the moving image channels TV, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok and the advertising on these channels.

The respondents had to state how they perceive the credibility of a channel and the associated advertising. For each channel, they were also asked how high they expected the credibility to be. This resulted not only in the expected and perceived credibility, but also the so-called credibility gap, i.e. the difference between expected and perceived. To be able to measure credibility, the institute determined so-called drivers and barriers for the credibility of the individual channels. In addition, there are 16 credibility aspects (8 each for channel and advertising), which emerged from the in-depth interviews and were answered by the respondents and weighted according to their relevance.

TV is number one in all 16 credibility aspects

The results clearly speak in favor of TV. Both expected (74 percent) and perceived (72 percent) credibility is by far the highest for the oldest of the five channels. The same applies to TV advertising (67 percent perceived credibility). The channel was thus rated more credible than YouTube by almost a third (55 percent expected / 44 percent perceived). Social media platforms are clearly at the bottom of the list, each with less than 30 percent perceived credibility. The same picture is reflected in advertising recall, where TV is also at the top, and is repeated in the credibility aspects, where TV was rated best for all 16, in some cases by over 20 percentage points more.

Based on the study results, Screenforce Switzerland determined the credibility factor on behalf of the Swiss Television Advertising Association (AGFS). This should enable the findings from the study to be applied in practice. For this purpose, Screenforce Switzerland calculated the 16 credibility aspects with their weighting, whereby a factor could be determined between each moving image channel. This results in statements such as: A contact on TV is 1.56 times more credible than a contact on YouTube.

Study for download as PDF.