At Adwanted’s Future of Media Manchester, Ozone’s Senior Director of Growth, Tom Harrison joined The Media Leader’s Senior Reporter, Jack Benjamin to explore what really influences someone to trust a brand – and ultimately take action.
While much of the performance conversation has come to be dominated by the big tech and social platforms, consumers encounter brands across a far broader digital ecosystem. The conversation challenged a long-standing assumption in that ecosystem: that marketers must choose between upper-funnel brand building and lower-funnel conversions.
Here are the key takeaways on trust, environment, and Ozone’s new performance-led outcomes capability, Arc.
Dismantling the brand vs. performance dichotomy
CMOs are under growing pressure to prove boardroom-level accountability for every media pound spent. Yet digital channels remain rigidly pigeonholed by role in the media mix, even as advertiser priorities shift:
- The shift to brand: 37% of UK advertisers plan to grow their brand-building budget share (vs. 14% for performance), recognising that brand trust prevents “creative sameness” in an AI world.
- A true alternative: Brands want a scaled alternative to the tech and social giants that can deliver on any KPI without trading off quality.
Arc: unlocking lower-funnel performance
Ozone recently launched Arc, its performance-led outcomes capability. Ozone’s audience platform is already built to deliver against a brand’s campaign objectives, and with the introduction of Arc, the same Connection Advantage can be applied to deliver results across the full marketing funnel.
Full-funnel capability: It enables buyers to optimise premium publisher inventory directly toward conversions and sales, proving that high-trust environments move the needle across the entire funnel.
Outcome optimisation: Arc combines consented audience data with an understanding of the content people are consuming, helping predict where audiences are in their purchase journey within a specific category – and the moments they’re most likely to act.
Trust as a performance multiplier
Fresh research highlights why editorial environment directly drives consumer action and why quality and performance don’t have to be opposing forces:
- The net trust gap: New research from Ozone, conducted with OnePoll among 2,000 UK adults reveals news, magazine, and lifestyle sites are the only online spaces where trust outweighs distrust (+12 net trust vs. -18 for social feeds).
- Driving intent: 40% of UK adults have bought something, or taken a step towards buying, after seeing an ad on an editorial site. Furthermore, Newsworks data shows news brand sites deliver a 32% uplift in action intent over long-tail web inventory.
- Profit impact: Citing Peter Field, trust has jumped to the 2nd strongest driver of brand profit over the last decade. IPA Databank analysis shows campaigns in trusted news environments deliver up to an 88% higher uplift in large profit growth.
Key takeaways on trust and context
The trust advantage: Editorial sites (news, magazine, lifestyle) are the only digital ad environments where trust outweighs distrust (net score +12 vs -18 for social feeds).
Driving intent: Premium publisher sites deliver a 32% uplift in action intent over long-tail web environments.
