In case you were unsure whether or not consumers trust recommendations from people they know, Nielsen confirmed last week they do. In fact, they trust their friends even more than paid advertising.

In Nielsen’s latest Global Online Consumer Survey, “recommendations from people known” was the most trusted form of “advertising.” Nothing shocking here. The survey of 25,000 internet consumers released last week also found opinions posted online sharing 2nd place, alongside brand websites, for the most trusted forms of advertising.

Interestingly, consumers reported a higher level of trust for all forms of advertising surveyed, er, except for newspapers. Something I found even more interesting, the surveyed internet consumers reported a higher trust for TV, newspapers, magazine and billboards than for opt-in email, search engine ads and text ads. Here’s the breakdown, per Nielsen:

Word of mouth is dominant, as it always has been. The internet has empowered word of mouth to spread much further and faster. We’re sharing the same product opinions with each other that we always have, we’re just doing it online and with an exponentially larger audience to exchange our product experiences with.

Of course, smart companies are using their website (2nd most trusted) as a place for consumers to have those opinion conversations. And the even smart companies are out on the web monitoring the off-site conversations about them.

I was a bit perplexed by the “emails signed up for” being in the latter half of the pack. Afterall, the recipients did sign up to receive them.