Leadership Through Trust: How UK Advertising is Fighting to Rebuild Consumer Confidence
Trust in ads reaches 40%, but 17% were scammed in 2025—Lead 2026 heard warnings that platforms must solve the fraud crisis or face government-imposed restrictions.
The UK advertising industry gathered at Westminster on 5 February 2026 for a blunt conversation about trust. Public trust in ads has hit a five-year high of 40%. At the same time, consumers operate in a “state of low-level vigilance,” constantly scanning for scams. Can the industry rebuild trust faster than fraudsters destroy it?
“Trust is the secret KPI that underpins all the other KPIs,” Andria Vidler, President of the Advertising Association, told the delegates at Lead 2026. £66.6 billion invested in UK advertising in 2024, supporting 5% of national employment and contributing £109 billion to GDP. It all depends on public confidence in the ads that fund it.
Political Warning Shots
Ian Murray, Minister for Creative Industries, who was due to appear in person but presented via a video link celebrated UK digital ad spend hitting £45 billion in 2026, up 10% year-on-year. He chairs the Online Advertising Task Force, which is tackling “harms” in the system. His video message praised the industry’s £1.5 billion WPP contract for government services. But he noted that “trust in advertising is growing, but should be closely monitored.”
Lord Ed Vaizey, former Culture Minister, was blunter. “Politicians are tempted to ban what they don’t like rather than use the power of advertising to change behaviour,” he said, attacking the junk food advertising ban as a “crude political solution” that damaged children’s media “without really any clear effect.” His advice: stop waiting for political endorsement. “Don’t wait for politicians to pat you on the back. If you don’t trust the messenger, why should you trust the message?”
Self-regulation works, or the government imposes bans. That was the message.
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The Self-Regulation Gamble
James Best, Chair of CAP and Credos, made the industry’s case for maintaining control of its own standards. His recently published book Trusted Advertising (co-authored with Matt Bourn) identified four principles: be trustworthy, give audiences something they enjoy, choose trusted environments, and measure trust as a KPI.
The data supports the approach. IPA analysis shows trust-building campaigns outperform other effective campaigns by 40% on both brand building and business results. But Best issued a warning: if the industry doesn’t enforce ASA standards universally, “sure as night follows day, government will step in and make the rules themselves, and there’ll be more restrictive rules.”
The ASA’s public awareness campaign, running since 2022, has proven effective—people who recall seeing it are twice as likely to trust ads. But that only works if everyone follows the rules. “Does anybody want another junk food ban?” Best asked the room. Nobody raised a hand.
The Trust Paradox
Dan Wilkes, Director of Credos, presented research showing why surface-level trust improvements mask deeper problems. Yes, 40% of people trust ads—the highest in five years. But people now “navigate advertising in a state of low-level vigilance,” constantly decoding, questioning and scanning content for intent.
Trust in advertising suffers from association with broader online threats. When M&S and Jaguar get hacked, consumers adopt a “trust no one, question everything” mindset. There’s a gap between the concept of advertising (jingles, humour, nostalgia) and the messy, daily experience of bombardment and suspicion of ads. Consumers have developed an “immune mindset”—one research participant who didn’t read reviews a few years ago now questions whether reviews are even genuine.
17% of people were scammed by an ad in 2025. “It makes people not trust legitimate ads either,” one participant explained. Only 37% regularly encounter enjoyable ads, yet enjoyment is the number one driver of trust.
For influencer marketing: “As a category, very few people trust influencer advertising, but everybody has an influencer that they trust.” Authentic relationships matter. Proper disclosure matters (nine out of 10 young people want to see ad disclosure). Smaller creators with genuine community connections beat massive reach.
Platform Responses
Kate Alessi, UK Managing Director at Google, faced direct questioning about platform responsibility for scam ads. Her defence: AI is the solution, not just the problem. Google deployed 50 new AI enhancements through large language models in 2024, blocking billions of scam ads before they appeared and reducing AI political impersonation reports by 90%.
Jonathan Allan, Interim CEO of Channel 4, wasn’t satisfied. “I find it baffling that platforms are allowing scam ads to still be running,” he said. The “free rider problem” means good actors build trust while bad actors exploit it.
Meta’s Rima Amin addressed the Reuters report claiming 10% of Meta’s revenue came from fraudulent ads. “Not true, a misinterpretation,” she stated. The figure came from internal research casting a wide net that included legitimate businesses using tactics scammers copy. The actual “high risk scams” figure might be 3-4%—still “higher than we’d like”, but Meta has driven 70% of ad revenue from verified advertisers (targeting 90%) and cut scam reports by 50% in 2025.
The Global Signal Exchange now processes 1 million fraud signals daily. When NatWest shared 125 URLs with Meta through the FIRE program, Meta took down 20,000 accounts. A pilot between Google and Amazon showed 100% uplift—both platforms “inoculated” themselves against each other’s threat intelligence.
Nick Sharp from the National Economic Crime Centre put numbers to the harm. One crypto fraud victim, voice disguised, described losing £28,000: “I wasn’t an investor. My money was just stolen.” With 4.2 million fraud incidents in England and Wales alone, and 300 victims annually safeguarded for suicide risk, Sharp stated: “These are not low-level crime types. The harm can be as hard as it can possibly get.”
The AI blindspot
The AI panel showed the industry wrestling with questions it can't answer yet.
Suresh Balaji, CMO of Lloyds Banking Group, ran a "Marketing Turing Test"—AI+human teams won, but he warned that when agents start talking to agents, "what happens to my brand? Your personal agent won't remember black horses, green colour, beautiful advertising."
Dr. Daniel Hulme, WPP's Chief AI Officer, put it bluntly: "AIs don't have intent. Human beings have intent, and it's always the intent you need to scrutinise." His example: an AI that discovered people pay more for taxis when phone batteries are low—exploiting vulnerability without understanding it.
Sean Betts from Omnicom said ChatGPT is testing paid ads, becoming a marketing platform its creators don't fully understand. OpenAI changed Reddit's search ranking during negotiations, then changed it back. The ASA launched new AI guidelines for a technology moving faster than any rulebook.
Proof Points That Trust Pays
Tom Carney from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero showed what trust-driven advertising achieves. The heat pumps integration into Emmerdale—using authentic messengers within trusted content—drove a surge in grant applications during and after the campaign aired. Trusted platform (Emmerdale’s sustainability commitment), authentic messenger (character driven by environmental daughter), social norming (challenging 70 years of gas boiler defaults).
“It’s the importance of a trusted platform with an authentic messenger that’s vital to carry the message that last few yards,” Carney said.
Karen Martin, CEO of BBH and IPA President, closed with a look at Tesco’s decade-long turnaround. From the 2014 horsemeat scandal and accounting missteps to market leadership restoration, Tesco rebuilt on trust—not short-term performance marketing.
“Doing very humble things in a very heroic way.” Being the first retailer to remove antibiotics. Adding CPR lessons to baby grows. Running “Pop to the Pub” during lockdown—telling customers to support local pubs instead of buying Tesco alcohol. The Food Love Stories campaign delivered a 19% increase in quality perception. Aldi Price Match nostalgia drove 80% growth in value perception.
Laurence Green, IPA Director of Effectiveness, presented the hard evidence from the IPA Databank. The “Trust 100”—campaigns scoring highest on trust—are 65% more likely to report very big business effects compared to 800 other effective campaigns. They’re twice as likely to shift product quality perceptions and twice as likely to build brand loyalty.
“Even if you’ve not been persuaded by the industry case for being trustworthy,” Green said, “your commercial self-interest should take you there.”
Self-regulation works when everyone enforces it. Trust delivers superior commercial results. The government will impose crude solutions if the sector doesn’t solve the scam crisis. The Advertising Association launched its Best Practice Guide for Responsible Use of Generative AI in Advertising at the event—the next battleground. Trust may be growing at 40%, but 17% of people got scammed last year. One number needs to grow faster than the other.
Trust really is the hidden KPI.
The 40% trust stat is encouraging, but 17% being scammed shows how fragile it still is.