People DO trust online sites as a news source

eMarketer has an article titled: "Does Anyone Trust the Media?"

"Globally, the most trusted information source was friends, with 42% of those surveyed saying that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. About an equal number trusted TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%). "

Here are the stats for a few countries in Asia Pac:

Online news beats TV in Australia, barely trails TV and Newspapers in China, 6 points behind Newspaper in Japan, and South Koreans are equally distrustful of all sources of information.


Here's what European countries look like:


Americans and Canadians. It's interesting that Americans are much less trustful of the traditional media than Canadians, but only differ by 4% when it comes to online news. Does the "pull factor" of interactive media make it more trustworthy and relevant than a "push factor" of traditional news? As in, I can "pull" the news from whatever sources I want to enrich my view of a subject matter vs. getting "push" news from a tradition publisher's (possibly biased) view.


So the question is: "WHY IS DIGITAL ADSPEND STILL AT 5% OR LESS?!?"