Marketers can’t stop talking about word of mouth. They want to generate it, monitor it and capitalize on it. After all, study after study has shown that, especially in the e-commerce realm, recommendations and reviews from other consumers wield a powerful influence over buying decisions.

But they aren’t the only influence. As part of a twice-yearly effort, researcher Nielsen surveyed 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East on their attitudes toward 13 types of advertising, from conventional newspaper and television ads to branded Web sites and consumer-generated content.

“Advertisers around the world are able to reach consumers across an increasingly diverse range of media platforms,” said David McCallum, global managing director for Nielsen’s customized research services, in a company press release. “Even so, the recommendation of someone else remains the most trusted source of information when consumers decide which products and services to buy. And even though new media technologies are playing a role in globalizing society, many purchasing decisions are still based on firmly held national and cultural attitudes. Furthermore, given that nothing travels faster than bad news - with estimates that reports of bad experiences outnumber good service reports by as many as five to one - the importance of responsive, high-quality customer service is yet again highlighted.”

As taken from Nielsen press materials, the survey found Filipinos and Brazilians (67 percent) to be the most trusting overall of all forms of advertising, while trust among Danes (28 percent), Italians (32 percent), Lithuanians (34 percent) and Germans (35 percent) were the lowest in the world.

While new platforms like the Internet are catching up with older media in terms of ad revenues, traditional advertising channels continue to retain the public’s trust. Ads in newspapers rank second worldwide among all media categories, at 63 percent overall, while television, magazines and radio each ranked above 50 percent. Such advertising scored best in Latin America and most poorly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions.

Although consumer recommendations are viewed as the most credible form of advertising among 78 percent of the study’s respondents, the research found significant national and regional differences regarding this and other media.

Word of mouth, for example, generates considerable levels of trust across much of Asia-Pacific. Seven of the top 10 markets that rely most on “recommendations from consumers” are in this region, including Hong Kong (93 percent), Taiwan  (91 percent) and Indonesia (89 percent). At the other end of the global spectrum, Europeans, generally, are least likely to trust what they hear from other consumers, particularly in Denmark (62 percent) and Italy (64 percent).

Opinions on the perceived reliability of consumer opinions posted online - which rated third, at 61 percent overall - also vary throughout the world. They score highest in North America and Asia , at 66 and 62 percent respectively. Among individual markets, Web-based opinions such as blogs are most trusted in South Korea (81 percent) and Taiwan (76 percent), while scoring lowest, at 35 percent, in Finland .

On the other hand, only consumer-generated media and branded Web sites were trusted by more than half of all consumers. Search engine and banner advertising, along with text ads on mobile phones, each scored at the bottom of the list with fewer than 35 percent of total respondents. Regionally, Latin American consumers found these ads most believable, while Europeans trusted them the least.