by Paul Ashby

Created on: March 30, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

Don't say you weren't warned you're wasting your money on the Web!

The evidence is all around you and yet those pesky advertising agencies are still pestering you to waste vast sums of money on Web 2.

Consider this: Businesses that advertise on line are facing an uphill struggle to connect with users of social networks as they grow weary of brash ads and become more hostile to digital marketing, according to research.

In a poll conducted by Facebook, more than half of users between 13 and 49 said that they never trust the marketing material they receive and 46% went as far as to say Internet advertising was driving them 'insane'. The ubiquitous pop-up is a particular source of irritation 90% of the 800 people surveyed voted them the least trustworthy source of Internet marketing.

The results demonstrate that marketers are at risk of alienating their target audience and are damaging their chances of making sales by swamping potential customers with banner ads and pop-ups.

There is also anecdotal evidence that there is growing distaste among consumers regarding networking sites using their details for marketing purposes, according the latest research.

Additionally almost seventy per cent of major marketers world-wide who advertise on line admit to uncertainty that they actually get what they pay for. That percentage increases to 75% in the United Kingdom and 78% in North America.

Moreover, 68% of the three thousand business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing professionals polled "didn't know" if they could trust the visitor/traffic profiles claimed by on line media owners and publishers.

And despite a recent forecast that on line ad revenues will hit $147 billion (93.27bn; 73.43bn) by 2012, a report reveals that marketers appear to have a major trust issue when it comes to the overall reliability and credibility of on line ads.

Their top five concerns?

1. They don't know if they actually get what they pay for.
2. They don't know if they can trust the visitor and/or traffic profile on line media owners and publishers claim their sites have.
3. They have the feeling there is a lot of click fraud.
4. They don't know if their ads appear in the sites and/or sites' sections where they should appear.
5. They don't trust the traffic and click-through reports digital media owners give them.

This could explain why 40% of marketers around the world did not run on line campaigns in 2007, a figure reaching 65% in high GDP growth markets such as Greater China, India and

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