Trust Determines Advertising Effectiveness and That Is Why the Store Must Be Part of the Media Plan

Schibsted’s Trust Report 2026 is an important and well-crafted report. It highlights one of the most decisive questions in marketing right now: trust. In a media landscape shaped by disinformation, AI-generated content, fake ads and declining trust in social platforms, the question of where a message appears is becoming just as important as the message itself.

Perhaps the report’s most important conclusion is that communication never starts from zero. It starts from a baseline of trust or skepticism. That is an extremely important insight.

But the report misses one channel that deserves its own place in the analysis: the physical store.

The store is not only a sales environment. It is also one of the most trusted commercial media environments we have. The customer has actively chosen to enter. The sender is clear. The products are physically present. The context is relevant. And in most cases, knowledgeable staff are nearby to answer questions, give advice and deepen the customer relationship.

It is difficult to imagine a more tangible form of trust than that.

In social media, consumers are exposed to advertising in a feed where sender, content and intent are often mixed together. In the store, the situation is the opposite. The customer is already in a context built around inspiration, need, advice and purchase. Advertising can be experienced less as an interruption and more as help, guidance or relevant information.

This is where we believe many retailers are still thinking too narrowly. They see the store as a sales channel, but not as a media channel. They sell spaces, but not audiences. They talk about digital screens, but not about actual contacts. They miss the opportunity to build a real media offering based on trust, relevance and measurability.

That needs to change.

Physical retail has something many other media channels lack: proximity to the moment of purchase. In the store, a message can create attention, inspire, lead to questions, be reinforced by staff and, in many cases, end with the customer taking the product home. That chain is far stronger than a digital exposure far removed from the purchase decision.

This does not mean that stores should be filled with more advertising. Quite the opposite. To succeed, in-store retail media must enhance the customer journey, not disrupt it. But when done right, it can create value for three parties at the same time. The customer receives more relevant information, the advertiser gains access to a trusted environment close to the purchase decision, and the retailer creates a new revenue stream in an industry where margins are under significant pressure.

However, this requires a new mindset.

Retailers need to see themselves as a unique media channel, in the sense that they own an audience, a context and a place where brands can communicate with high relevance. It may be one of the best channels for packaging audiences, measuring contacts and demonstrating effect.

This is about measuring trust in advertising in physical stores in the same way we measure trust in advertising across digital and editorial environments.

We are convinced that the store will perform very strongly in that comparison.

Schibsted’s report shows that trust is a business-critical factor. We fully agree. And when media context determines how a message is received, the physical store may be one of the most important channels.

For us, the store is one of the market’s most underestimated media channels.

Christian Bönnelyche
Senior Advisor, BizLab

Michael Lemner
Board Member, BizLab