Around half of adults are unable to recognise ads in Google’s search results, according to a survey. This surprising statistic comes from Ofcom’s Adults’ media use and attitudes report , released this month. While I’ve seen studies suggesting that many people don’t know the difference between paid and organic ads, that 50% could look at a set of results like those below and still not spot them seems bizarre. The stats For Ofcom’s study, ‘adults who use search engines’ were shown a picture of the SERPs for ‘walking boots’.