"Felt Fooled" 7 out of 10 Consumers Mistake 'Portal Search Ads' Information

Fair Trade Commission Investigation... 80% of Consumers Say "Current Search Advertising Practices Need Improvement"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Haeyoung] A survey found that up to 7 out of 10 consumers do not recognize advertisements that appear in online platform searches as ads.

The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 20th that a consumer perception survey on search advertisements on major online platforms such as comprehensive portals, open markets, price comparison sites, O2O (online-offline linkage), and application markets showed these results.

Search advertisements are ads included in search results when a specific keyword is entered in the search bar. When ads are not explicitly labeled as advertisements and only faint colors, icon markings, or ambiguous expressions are used, consumer recognition of the ads was only around 30%. This is lower than the ad recognition rate (48.8%) when it is directly labeled as 'advertisement.' Only 35.8% of respondents were aware that ad products are sometimes placed in between search results.

In the case of category ads within O2O, where ad products are grouped and placed together, the proportion of consumers recognizing that all products within the category are advertisements by labeling it only once at the top was also quite low at 24.4%.

Accordingly, 80.1% of respondents answered that improvements are needed in the current search advertisement practices. Additionally, 78.6% responded that guidelines for clearer labeling forms such as notation style, font size, color, and label placement are necessary. Regarding the method of ad labeling, consumers preferred clear labeling forms such as Korean notation (80.8%), font size larger than the main text (54.3%), contrasting colors (76.4%), and labeling in front of the product name (40.9%). For category ads within O2O, 71.4% of respondents also answered that individual ad labeling is necessary.

A Fair Trade Commission official stated, "We plan to continuously strive to protect consumer choice rights and establish a sound transaction order in the field of search advertisements on online platforms," adding, "We will encourage voluntary compliance so that related businesses can more clearly indicate whether content is a search advertisement."