Facebook knows where to go to be believed: opinion

It's one thing for your ad to be seen by 1000 people, quite another for those people to believe your message.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks at the company's headquarters in California. Picture: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

FACEBOOK is on the nose after breaching the privacy and trust of millions of its users, including hundreds of thousands of Australians.

Together with Google, it swallows up 85 cents of every advertising dollar spent on the internet.

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and CEO of Facebook, is no dummy. He has not built a multi-billion dollar empire by making bad business decisions.

Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of Facebook. Picture: Esteban Felix

Now, in an attempt to regain the world's trust, Facebook is conducting an advertising blitz.

But it is not putting this message out there via its own social platform.

Instead, it is using traditional media. Why?

If Facebook is the be-all and end-all - and you own it - why not run your ad campaign there? For free?

Because the "trust" gap between traditional media and digital media is a yawning chasm, that's why. And Facebook fully knows this.

The most recent AdTrust survey conducted by NewsMediaWorks interviewed 4000 Aussies. The people interviewed revealed the most trusted ads were newspaper ads, followed by ads seen in cinemas, then outdoors, then radio and then television. Newspaper ads have a trust score of +38. Social media ads have a trust score of -28.

It's one thing for your ad to be seen by 1000 people, quite another for those people to believe your message.