In our latest webinar, Feefo's Chief Revenue Officer Elliott Clayton shared headline findings from our Censuswide survey of 3,000 UK consumers, Solmar Villas' Marketing Manager Emma Plummer showed how they put those trust signals to work across every channel, and Customer Success Manager Tom Kelvin-Smith walked through practical steps for getting started.
Key takeaways
- Absence of proof is now a negative signal: over half of UK consumers say they'd avoid a brand that doesn't feature a review provider in its advertising.
- Different audiences need different trust signals: men, women, and different age groups respond to reviews in measurably different ways.
- Verified reviews carry a measurable premium: among consumers familiar with both verified and open platforms, Feefo reviews are twice as likely to be trusted.
- Consistency across channels compounds: Solmar Villas uses Feefo ratings from TV through to checkout, building trust at every stage of the booking journey.
- AI search is already using review quality as a ranking signal: LLMs prioritise trusted, verified sources. Recency, relevance and verification more important than volume alone.
What does the research on advertising and trust signals tell us?
Elliot confirmed what much of the industry is noticing – customer acquisition is getting more expensive, and consumers are increasingly cautious about where they spend.
85% of UK consumers now check at least one review provider before buying. That figure has been climbing, and the expectation has shifted. Consumers don't treat third-party validation as a nice extra – they treat its absence as a negative signal.
63% of consumers are actively worried that the reviews they're reading online might be fake. Google searches for "buy reviews" have reached record highs, and open platforms – where anyone can leave a review regardless of whether they made a purchase – are increasingly subject to scrutiny. The source of a review matters as much as its content.
Why does the absence of social proof hurt?
More than 54% of consumers said that an ad without a review provider or trust signal is a negative signal – something that actively makes them less likely to buy. On the flip side, 67% said they're more likely to buy from a brand that includes genuine customer satisfaction data in its advertising.
Interestingly, 59% of consumers trust a brand more when it features feedback from more than one review provider. Elliott framed this as a media-planning question. If different consumers respond to different trust signals, the mix you show them deserves the same strategic thought as your channel mix.
How do demographics affect trust behaviour?
One of the more practical findings from the research is that trust behaviour varies significantly by audience.
Gender
Women are measurably more likely to consult multiple review sources before purchasing. Nearly 20% of women in the survey checked four or more review platforms before buying, compared to men – where nearly 20% made purchases without consulting any third-party source at all. For brands with high-value products aimed at women, this has direct implications for how prominently and how widely trust signals need to appear.
Age
The 18–24 audience is more receptive to video and social content, but also highly aware that influencer endorsements are paid. If this is your target audience, pulling verified video and social content into your site can improve conversion – but the content needs to feel genuine.
The 25–54 age group, Feefo's strongest brand recognition segment, is the most attuned to the distinction between verified and unverified reviews. Around 32% of this group in the survey were already aware of Feefo and actively looked for purchase-verified feedback.
For the 55+ audience, trust in reviews has actually declined year on year, the only segment where this was the case. This group tends to gravitate towards recognised consumer bodies like Which?, and may need different proof points entirely.
How does Solmar Villas use trust signals across their marketing?
Emma Plummer shared how Solmar Villas has built verified reviews into every stage of the customer journey, rather than treating them as an on-site-only feature.
Solmar offers more than 2,500 hand-picked villas across over 40 destinations. In 2024, the business joined DER Touristik UK, the group behind Kuoni, CV Villas and Carrier. But the emphasis on trust predates that move: holidays are a high-value, considered purchase, and giving customers confidence in who they're booking with has always been central to Solmar's approach.
- TV
- Paid search and paid social
- On-site
- Email and direct mail
- Start with the objective
- Get the basics right
Solmar's Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award features on the end frame of their TV advertising – a placement that reinforces brand trust at a key decision moment. They've used this approach consistently for four years.
In paid search, seller ratings and review extensions help Solmar stand out on competitive results pages, giving potential customers immediate reassurance before they even reach the website.
On paid social, Feefo ratings and verified guest reviews appear across campaigns, building confidence at the first point of contact and, as Emma noted, attracting higher-quality traffic from the outset.
Once visitors reach the Solmar site, Feefo ratings and guest reviews appear at key decision-making moments: the homepage, filter pages, and throughout the checkout journey. For a considered purchase like a villa holiday, visible verified feedback from previous guests helps convert interest into a booking.
Solmar extends the same trust signals into welcome email journeys and physical direct mail. The principle is consistency: wherever customers interact with the brand – browsing on-site, opening an email, or receiving a catalogue – they see authentic feedback from real guests.
For a deeper look at how verified reviews are changing travel advertising more broadly, see our companion piece on why verified reviews are transforming travel advertising in 2026.
What are the best practices for using reviews in advertising?
Tom closed the session with practical advice for anyone looking to start using trust signals in their own campaigns.
Identify what you're trying to achieve with each campaign – whether that's reinforcing brand trust (where a trust badge or Trusted Service Award works well, as Solmar have shown on TV) or driving conversion at the point of purchase (where star ratings and customer quotes are more effective).
- Legibility. If you're including a trust signal, make sure it's large enough and clear enough for consumers to actually read it. A barely visible star rating doesn't earn its place.
- Credibility. Include the badge or logo from your review provider alongside any customer quote or rating. This directly counters the scepticism Elliott highlighted in the research: consumers are more likely to trust a review when they can see it's been independently verified.
- Brand guidelines. Follow your review provider's brand guidelines. Recognition of the provider's brand reinforces the credibility of the trust signal.
- GDPR and data privacy. Ensure you have the appropriate permissions to use customer data in your marketing. Your review provider should be managing this on your behalf, but it's worth confirming. When quoting a review in advertising, use the reviewer's first name and initial only – never their full name.
Trust signals aren't limited to screens. In radio advertising, a simple line, "rated 4.8 on Feefo" or "trusted by thousands of purchaser-verified reviews", adds a layer of effective trust. Audio doesn't allow for star visuals or badges, but a spoken rating backed by a named provider still gives the listener a concrete proof point.
Rather than rolling out your new trust signals across everything at once, Tom recommended a phased approach:
- Think beyond digital
- Test, measure and scale
- Audit your current marketing activity and identify upcoming campaigns.
- Pick one or two channels to test first.
- Collect performance data – click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per acquisition. One client saw a 25% increase in search conversion rate after adding independent star ratings.
- Analyse, optimise, and then scale to wider channels.
For TV specifically, Elliott recommended System1 Group's Test Your Ad platform, which measures emotional response to advertising. You can run a version of the ad with and without customer satisfaction ratings and measure the difference in audience response.
How are AI search engines using review data?
The final theme from the webinar – and one that came up in the audience questions – was AI search. While LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini already cite Feefo reviews when consumers ask for brand comparisons or product recommendations, Tom highlighted a recent shift.
Early AI models leaned heavily on volume. Increasingly, they're moving towards quality, prioritising verified, trusted sources over sheer quantity of mentions. For businesses collecting purchase-verified reviews with Feefo, this creates a structural advantage in AI-generated search results: the reviews are more likely to be cited, and the signals they send – recency, relevance, verification – align with what AI models are optimising for.
How can you start using reviews in your advertising?
What’s clear from the research is that consumers expect to see trust signals, and they respond measurably when they do. The opportunity for marketers is to stop treating reviews as something that lives on a product page and start deploying them as a performance asset across every channel – from TV end-frames to PPC extensions to radio scripts to email footers.
Watch the full webinar on demand and download The Trust Advantage report for the complete data behind the findings.
