“Consumer-generated content is by far a more trusted form of advertising worldwide than search engine ads, banner ads, or text ads, according to Nielsen, and is trusted almost as much as physical word-of-mouth. 66 percent of North Americans trust consumer-generated media, such as blogs. Only higher trust ranking was ‘other consumer recommendations,’ which earned 78 percent of respondents’ trust.” [WebProNews via LexBlog]

Recent example: George’s review of the new Sony HRD-CX7 digital video camera. I happen to know that George knows a LOT about cameras, hardware and software. If he likes this camera enough to buy and recommend it, that’s all I need to know.