• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 13, 2019

Building a brand's reputation isn’t something to take lightly, even when it comes to search ads.

A good reputation promotes trust and loyalty that cultivates direct relationships with customers. It has become critical in meeting the expectations of consumers.

Findings from a new survey of 1,017 U.S. consumers released Tuesday found that a whopping 73.06% of consumers would stop buying a brand’s product after discovering that an ad they clicked on or viewed infected their computer or mobile device with a virus. About 13.47% would reduce their purchases by more than half, while 6.29% would reduce purchases by less than half and 7%.18 would buy the same amount.

The survey, conducted by the Trustworthy Accountability Group and the Brand Safety Institute through SurveyMonkey, also found that 66.67% of consumers would stop buying the brand’s product if they found an ad for a product they regularly buy appearing next to a terrorist recruiting video. About 15.83% would reduce purchases by more than half, and 7.83% would reduce purchases by less than half. Only 10.23% would buy the same amount.

I found some of the questions in the survey to be oddly phrased, however -- such as the one asking what the outcome would be if the consumer “discovered that ads for a consumer product you regularly buy had appeared on a website promoting illegal activities, such as stolen videos and other content.”

Hopefully, the consumer doesn’t frequent the publisher’s website in these instances and just heard it by hearsay.

Whatever the circumstances, 45.23% of the consumers who answered this question said they would stop buying the product, while 21.34% said they would reduce their purchases by more than half, 14.95% would reduce their purchases by less than half, and 18.49% would buy the same amount.

There are many facets of reputation management. Not all techniques are legitimate, especially when it comes to reviews. About three weeks ago, CBS News looked into how companies manage their online reputation and found that some companies are hired to clean up bad reviews.

CBS News found companies like Web Savvy, a reputation management firm that buries bad reviews online. These are the companies that can sometimes flood Google with positive content about their clients, forcing negative links down to the second or third page in query results.