Advertising is dead.

It’s a popular sentiment. Search Google for the phrase and you’ll find close to 95,000 results, signifying widespread agreement with the notion. Surveys consistently show that few people trust advertising. Even measuring an ad’s effectiveness can be notoriously hard, since connecting a TV spot or a banner ad to an actual sale is next to impossible. Add to all this the research that reveals people increasingly make purchase decisions based on reviews and recommendations—often delivered via social media—and it’s easy to believe that advertising’s days are over.

You would be wrong. Advertising is alive and well.

People still don’t trust advertising. Only 17% of US adults believe companies are honest in ads. Sponsored content fares about the same; only 24% of readers peruse native ads while 71% will scroll through native organic content.

That’s not the only bad news for advertisers when it comes to consumer tolerance for ads. But none of this means that ads don’t work. That is, what consumers say about advertising and how they actually react to it are two different things altogether. (It’s like asking a celebrity what book is on his or her night table and deciding to stop publishing tell-all Hollywood biographies just because they said they were reading Joseph Campbell or Vladimir Nabakov.)

According to a recent Forrester research report, 42% of US consumers believe advertising is a terrific way to learn about new products. While that leaves 58% who don’t, few advertisers would opt to withdraw their investments from a channel that reaches 102-plus million US consumers.

But advertising’s effectiveness doesn’t stop there. Nearly 20% of Americans say they buy products because of ads, a whopping 12% increase from just three years ago. It’s even better on smartphones; a staggering 70% of consumers who saw a mobile ad last y ear wound up buying a consumer packaged goods product as a result. Further, according to the Forrester report, “after seeing an ad, 17% of online adults researched a product or service on a search engine, 13% clicked on an online ad and were directed to a website, and 10% talked about an ad with others.”

It’s not unreasonable to think that the 18% of consumers paying a premium for access to ad-free sites or using ad blockers are among the 58% who don’t think advertising is an excellent way to learn about new products. But that won’t stop them from seeing a TV commercial someone shares with them on Facebook, Twitter, email, chat app, or other channels. By virtue of the fact that a friend, relative, or colleague shared it, it has been endorsed and could well prompt the ad-hater to watch it.

Heaven knows that’s what happens on Super Bowl Sunday. Before the 2014 game, it was estimated that 61% of people watching the Super Bowl would share commercials they saw via social media. As for this year’s Super Bowl, McDonald’s alone was the subject of nearly half a million social media mentions, with Coca-Cola, Nationwide, Budweiser, and T-Mobile also scoring big numbers.

Not that you need a venue like the Super Bowl for ads to take off. Will Ferrell produces TV commercials for Old Milwaukee Beer. The spots are shot in a second-tier city and buys are made only for the locale in which it was produced. Yet the YouTube versions of these ads attract tens of thousands—and in some cases, over a million—views. Here’s an example:

Star power isn’t necessary, either. Each week, Adweek shares the week’s top 5 new commercials. For last week, each has exceeded 40,000 YouTube views. That is, more than 40,000 deliberately clicked to watch an advertisement from companies like Honda.

The question, then, isn’t whether to advertise; it’s how. Given the vast array of options, including social media advertising, Google AdWords, native advertising, Facebook videos, YouTube ads, and more, the choices can be daunting.

The Forrester report has its own recommendations: collect nondemographic data (e.g., location, attitude); use dynamic ads (i.e., ads that adjust their content based on user profiles); and manage contact frequency (“context can help optimize the best time to send a marketing message”).

To these suggestions, I would add the importance of developing a content strategy that precedes ad development. Ads are just one part of the mix. If the social media team can’t take advantage of content beyond its use as a TV spot or magazine display ad, it won’t produce the kind of impact you’ll get from an ad that’s part of a bigger strategy.

But don’t drop advertising. There’s life in that beast yet.