The Downside of Digital Word of Mouth And the Pursuit of Media Quality: How Social Sharing Is Disrupting Digital Advertising Models and Metrics

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What We KnoW about Word of Mouth
DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2017-020 June 2017 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 127
INTRODUCTION
When the mobile Internet was still in its early
growth phase, around 2012, social-networking
usage shifted quickly in its direction. What fol-
lowed was an unprecedented boom in viral content
that shook the digital world.
Social media became so powerful a medium for
spreading content and ideas that it was inevitable
there eventually would be attempts to exploit it.
Within a very short time, the environment became
riddled with various forms of “digital pollu-
tion”—from spam to fraud and “fake news”— the
prevalence of which has been accelerated and exac-
erbated by the rise of programmatic advertising.
The digital-media environment has evolved so
quickly that the metrics infrastructure has been chal-
lenged to keep pace. Digital word of mouth, in the
form of the rapid sharing of content via social and
mobile channels, both has democratized content and
has created a system of incentives that has commod-
itized the ecosystem. The short-term chase for bigger
audience metrics and greater impression volume has
led to significant challenges for media economics.
Metrics have been a part of the problem but also
promise to be part of the solution. The fundamental
metrics of media planning and campaign measure-
ment—impressions, reach, frequency, and demo-
graphics—need not go away. The difference now is
that these metrics need a higher level of validation
to ensure that the inventory being bought is clean,
legitimate, and appearing in environments condu-
cive to effective advertising.
THE RISE OF DIGITAL WORD OF MOUTH
There is no more powerful way of communicating
information, including marketing messages, than
from person to person. Word-of-mouth communi-
cation plays on the value of trust to persuade how
others think, feel, and act. We know this from his-
tory, long before “social media” entered the pub-
lic lexicon. Remember the 1982 Fabergé Organics
Shampoo spot that made Heather Locklear the face
of peer-to-peer advertising? “She liked her sham-
poo so much, she told two friends, who told two
friends, who told two more friends, ‘and so on and
so on and so on’” (Precourt, 2014, p. 124).
Marketers in the early 2000s became further
enamored with the potential of word of mouth
when popular books—like Malcolm Gladwell’s
(2000) The Tipping Point and Ed Keller and Jon
Berry’s (2003) The Influentials—entered the pub-
lic discourse. By the middle of the first decade, as
the Internet began to mature as a communication
medium with the emergence of social networks, the
need to reconsider the original model of how word
of mouth works became clear. With the average
person no longer limited to influencing only those
in his or her immediate circle of friends and family
through person-to-person interactions, the Internet
suddenly was enabling influence at scale. People
could make (or solicit) recommendations instantly
to the hundreds of people in their networks.
No longer did the truly powerful ideas or prod-
ucts require a long and sustained grassroots effort
to gain critical mass and enter the public conscious-
ness. The density of communication and velocity
with which ideas could spread on social networks
meant that if something resonated with the public,
it could gain mass exposure very quickly.
Social sharing was thought of as a panacea for
both users and marketers, with the promise that the
most powerful ideas and marketing messages had
GIAN M. FULGONI
comScore, Inc.
gfulgoni@comscore.com
ANDREW LIPSMAN
comScore, Inc.
alipsman@comscore.com
Numbers,
Please
The Downside of Digital Word of Mouth
And the Pursuit of Media Quality
How Social Sharing Is Disrupting
Digital Advertising Models and Metrics

128 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH June 2017
What We KnoW about Word of Mouth
a path to maximum exposure. The Internet
had an even greater potential to democra-
tize ideas and break through traditional
distribution barriers. This meant brands
had to get comfortable ceding some con-
trol over their message, but also that they
could find new and creative ways to reach
and engage their customers.
On a commercial level, Dollar Shave
Club broke through with a highly effec-
tive viral video advertisement that helped
an unknown brand reach millions of men
tired of paying too much for razors.1 At a
more societal level, there was the poten-
tial for spreading positive messages for
important causes, such as the Ice Bucket
Challenge for building awareness of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), other-
wise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. (The
Ice Bucket Challenge eventually led to the
discovery of a gene tied to the disease.2)
Social media also helped engage more
citizens in the political process, by encour-
aging voting and providing improved
means of participation and grassroots
organizing.
Grappling with Metrics:
The Primacy of Audience Scale
By the end of this century’s first decade—
as digital media time-shifted to mobile—
users were spending more time in front of
their screens than ever before. As social-
media platforms referred significant traffic
to a variety of publishers, digital audiences
consistently climbed. The top 1,000 digital
media properties’ average U.S. monthly
audience rose to 16.8 million in December
2016 from 12.3 million in December 2013,
a gain of 37 percent in just three years.
1 J. P. Pullen, “How a Dollar Shave Club’s Ad Went Viral,”
October 13, 20102. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from Entre-
preneur.com: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224282.
2 K. Rogers, “The ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ Helped Scientists
Discover a New Gene Tied to A.L.S,” The New York Times,
July 27, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www
.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/health/the-ice-bucket-challenge
-helped-scientists-discover-a-new-gene-tied-to-als.html.
This growth was generated exclusively
by mobile audiences, which increased
127 percent during that time period (com-
Score, 2016a; See Figure 1).
Publishers gained the added benefit
of audience scale, a positive develop-
ment that typically would translate into
improved business prospects. Larger scale
means an improved ability to reach tar-
get audiences and be included in adver-
tisers’ media plans. Yet publishers often
had difficulty effectively monetizing
their mobile inventory and could not take
full advantage of this increased scale.
Their predicament suggested that the
sometimes-singular pursuit of audience
scale was shortsighted.
Although top-line metrics of scale more
easily could be achieved, metrics dem-
onstrating the depth of engagement and
quality of the media environment often
were overlooked. Dmitry Shishkin, digital
development editor of BBC World Service
Group, in 2015 said that with mobile “you
might get random traffic spikes, but you
won’t get engagement. We must figure out
how to monetize minutes of engagement,
not just eyeballs.”3
Another prominent publishing execu-
tive elaborated on this point. Evan Wil-
liams, who cofounded Twitter and later
launched the blogging platform Medium,
questioned the industry’s overreliance
on “monthly active users” in response to
a headline about Instagram surpassing
Twitter on that metric. Reducing every
digital-publisher conversation to a single
metric of audience scale fails to acknowl-
edge the many other factors that make an
audience unique. “[Twitter is a] realtime
information network where everything
in the world that happens occurs on Twit-
ter — important stuff breaks on Twitter
3 J. Davies, “Publishers Share Their Biggest Headaches in
Monetizing Mobile,” October 6, 2015. Retrieved March 24,
2017, from Digiday.com: http://digiday.com/uk/publishers
-monetizing-mobile-headaches/.
and world leaders have conversations on
Twitter,” Williams wrote in one of his blog
posts. “If that’s happening, I frankly don’t
[care] if Instagram has more people look-
ing at pretty pictures.”4
At Medium, Williams advocated use of
a “total time reading” metric to capture
the overall engagement of his audience
base rather than relying solely on metrics
of audience scale. But in January 2017,
Williams announced that Medium was
retooling its business in search of a new
monetization model not dependent on
advertisements.5 It seems that audience
scale remains essential for advertising-
driven business models, but Williams also
makes a good argument that it may not be
sufficient.
“Fake News” and Misaligned Incentives
The problems of identifying the right met-
rics further were compounded by corrup-
tive practices in digital media. Indeed, the
viral content boom created a powerful way
for those seeking to take advantage of the
platform in potentially damaging ways.
Suddenly, the promise of digital word of
mouth at scale also was attracting various
forms of digital pollution that made the
environment less attractive and harder for
marketers to navigate.
Case in point: Donald J. Trump’s sur-
prising march to victory in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election. In the wake of this
shocking result, which belied the many
polls predicting a comfortable victory for
Hillary Clinton, many placed blame at the
feet of various media channels (See “What
Survey Researchers Can Learn from the
2016 U.S. Pre-Election Polls,” page 182).
4 E. Williams, “A Mile Wide, an Inch Deep,” Janu-
ary 5, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from Medium:
https://medium.com/@ev/a-mile-wide-an-inch-deep
-48f36e48d4cb#.esbb9tb5a.
5 M. Gajanan, “Medium Announced Major Layoffs,” January
4, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from Fortune.com: http://
fortune.com/2017/01/04/medium-layoff-announcment
-ev-williams/.

June 2017 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 129
THEDOWnSIDEOFDIGITAlWOrDOFMOuTHAnDTHEPurSuITOFMEDIAQuAlITY THEARF.ORG
Source: comScore
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Dec-2013
Feb-2014
Apr-2014
Jun-2014
Aug-2014
Oct-2014
Dec-2014
Feb-2015
Apr-2015
Jun-2015
Aug-2015
Oct-2015
Dec-2015
Feb-2016
Apr-2016
Jun-2016
Aug-2016
Oct-2016
Dec-2016
Total Digital Desktop Mobile
Average of Unique Visitors
by Platform (MM)
5.6
12.7
8.1
6.3
12.3
16.8
Figure 1 Top 1,000 Properties: Average Monthly Audience (MM)
There was criticism of which stories were
and were not covered by certain media
outlets, the attention given to particular
stories, and, most notable, the role that
“fake news” might have played in influ-
encing the electorate.
A BuzzFeed analysis suggested that in
the lead-up to the general election, the total
number of engagements on social media
for fake news stories surpassed the num-
ber of mainstream news stories during the
period of August through Election Day.6
Some purveyors of fake news—such as a
network of teenagers in Macedonia—were
motivated primarily by economics, real-
izing that exploiting social-media users’
willingness to believe and share fake news
stories that reinforced their ideological
bent was a lucrative business.7 Fake news
6 C. Silverman, “This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Elec-
tion News Stories Outperformed Real News on Facebook,”
November 16, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from Buzz-
Feed News: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/
viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on
-facebook?utm_term=.ho65OVOxG#.rmEE0x0nl.
7 A. Smith and V. Banic, “Fake News: How a Partying Mac-
edonian Teen Earns Thousands Publishing Lies,” Decem-
ber 9, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from NBC News:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how
-partying-macedonian-teen-earns-thousands-publishing
-lies-n692451.
was an easy way to generate clicks, which
generated advertising impressions, which
generated revenue. Increasingly wary of
fake news, brands have taken a stronger
stand about being placed alongside this
and other objectionable content, with
greater attention being placed on blacklist-
ing sites known to be peddling these types
of content.8
Programmatic Pressure
And the Problem with Bots
Although many pollutants of the digital-
media ecosystem were inevitable, one could
argue that their prevalence was exacerbated
by the rise of programmatic advertising.
Automated trading platforms, through the
promise of improved efficiency in reaching
the right audiences, have become important
new gatekeepers in how digital media are
bought and sold. When the impressions on
advertising exchanges get packaged and
sold like pork bellies, the quality of the
8 J. Nicas, “Fake News Sites Inadvertently Funded by
Big Brands,” The Wall Street Journal, December 8,
2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.wsj.
com/articles/fake-news-sites-inadvertently-funded-by-big
-brands-1481193004.
inventory and media environment tends to
take a back seat.
In this environment, the incentive
changes for content producers. Instead
of investing in building a brand through
high-quality content that attracts loyal
readership, cobbling together cheap web-
sites promoting sensationalist headlines
that easily can generate clicks becomes
an easier path to generating advertising-
impression volume.
In many cases, that takes the form of
clickbait designed to find its way into
people’s social-media feeds and gener-
ate quick eyeballs. In more extreme cases,
this clickbait comes in the form of fake
news. In yet more extreme cases, there are
websites built purely for the purpose of
generating fake impressions through bot
traffic, siphoning off advertising dollars
along the way.
In December 2016, digital-advertising
security company WhiteOps publicized
the existence of “Methbot,” a bot network
with roots in Russia that was generating
fake impressions on a massive scale.9
comScore research corroborated that,
although this particular bot network was
a large one, it was not especially unique in
its magnitude—representing just 0.86 per-
cent of global invalid traffic observed by
comScore on December 19, the day before
the threat was made public by WhiteOps.
Threats of this nature will continue to
persist as long as they are able to exploit
a digital-advertising ecosystem that lacks
transparency—allowing for rampant infla-
tion of fake advertising impressions that
go undetected—because verification ser-
vices were not used.
9 J. Marshall, “Russian Hackers Stole Millions from
Video Advertisers, Ad Fraud Company Says,” The Wall
Street Journal, December 21, 2016. Retrieved March 24,
2017, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers
-stole-millions-from-video-advertisers-ad-fraud-company
-says-1482272717.

130 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH June 2017
What We KnoW about Word of Mouth
ArETurnTOMEDIAQuAlITY
Digital media stakeholders increasingly
are standing up for quality:
• Facebook and Google both have said
they would take action to remove fake
news from their newsfeeds and search
results.10
• Publishers such as Slate and The New
Yorker stopped hosting “around the
web” advertisements on their websites.11
• The Economist has begun selling adver-
tisements on the basis of attention met-
rics, such as time in view.12
• As of late March 2017, more than 1,500
advertisers, including 3M, Allstate, Avis,
Bed Bath and Beyond, Charles Schwab,
10 N. Wingfield, M. Isaac, and K. Benner, “Google and Face-
book Take Aim at Fake News Sites,” The New York Times,
November 14, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://
www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban
-websites-that-host-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service
.html.
11 S. Maheshwari and J. Herrman, “Publishers Are Rethink-
ing Those ‘Around the Web’ Ads,” The New York Times,
October 30, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://
www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/business/media/publishers
-rethink-outbrain-taboola-ads.html.
12 J. Davies, “How The Economist Plans to Grow Atten-
tion-Based Ad Sales,” February 4, 2016. Retrieved March
24, 2017, from Didigday.com: https://digiday.com/uk/
economist-plans-scale-time-based-ad-sales/.
Kellogg’s, and Nestlé, had stated publicly
they would be pulling their advertise-
ments from the alt-right-leaning Breit-
bart News site and other sites they deem
inconsistent with their brand values.13,14
• Media investment firm GroupM in 2015
demanded that its publishing part-
ners get TAG certified in order to get
included on their media buys.15 TAG is
the Trustworthy Accountability Group,
which in February that year announced
its antipiracy program. Its goal is to help
prevent the placement of advertise-
ments on websites that facilitate distri-
bution of pirated content or the illegal
13 T. M. Andrews, “Kellogg’s, Citing ‘Values,’ Joins Grow-
ing List of Companies That Pledged to Stop Advertis-
ing in Breitbart News,” The Washington Post, October
30, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.
washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/30/
kellogg-citing-values-joins-growing-list-of-companies
-that-pledged-to-stop-advertising-in-breitbart-news/
?utm_term=.3836269e1e4f.
14 Sleeping Giants, “Sleeping Giants Confirmed List
Updated 3.17.17,” Retrieved March 24, 2017, from Sleeping
Giants Twitter page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/
d/1i9o8CR_kjJ6mBd44k6CRZEhlXuZqq-XCCOoj-e8RJ7Q/
edit#gid=0.
15 T. Peterson, “Group M Wages War on Piracy Sites
with Anti-Fraud Group TAG, Demands Publishers Join,”
September 23, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from
AdvertisingAge: http://adage.com/article/digital/groupm
-wages-war-piracy-sites-anti-fraud-group-tag/300510/.
dissemination of counterfeit goods. As
of May 2016, more than 30 leading
digital-advertising companies and agen-
cies had agreed to participate in TAG’s
antifraud initiative.16
In July 2016, comScore conducted research
highlighting the value of quality adver-
tising environments. The advertising
effectiveness study examined the value
of premium media environments, which
were defined as member companies of
the Digital Content Next trade group. It
showed that premium publishers deliv-
ered 67 percent higher branding lift than
nonpremium publishers (comScore, 2016b;
See Figure 2).
Some of this difference could be
explained by higher viewability rates
(50 percent versus 45 percent) and lower
incidence of invalid traffic (2.2 percent
versus 3.5 percent) on those publisher
sites. The halo effect of the premium,
well-lit, contextually relevant environ-
ment, however, was the more significant
cause of improved advertising effective-
ness.17 Research that helps isolate the
value of the environment—beyond its
ability to deliver an impression against
a certain type of audience—can better
inform media buyers about the inven-
tory that most likely will work for them.
What is more, the use of supplementary
metrics of engagement—whether time in
view, interaction rates, completion rates,
or a variety of other metrics—also gives
the media buyer better information to use
to allocate media spend.
16 “Group M Proudly Supports TAG’s Launch Anti-Fraud
Certification Program,” Group M press release, May 23,
2016. Retrieved March 26, 2017, from https://www.groupm.
com/news/groupm-proudly-supports-tags-launch-anti
-fraud-certification-program.
17 M. Swant, “Ads on Premium Publisher Sites Are 3 Times
More Effective at Boosting Brand Favorability,” Adweek,
July 14, 2016. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from http://www.
adweek.com/news/technology/ads-premium-publishers
-sites-are-3-times-more-effective-boosting-brand-favorability
-172509.
Impressions-Weighted Brand Lift Results Based on 15 Large U.S. Display
and Video Campaigns 2015–2016
DCN Publishers Non-DCN Publishers
Note: DCN publishers are members of the Digital Context Next trade group.
Source: comScore
0.89
0.53
Figure 2 Average Brand Lift of Premium versus Nonpremium
Publishers
Impressions-Weighted Brand Lift Results Based on 15 Large U.S. Display
and Video Campaigns 2015–2016
DCN Publishers Non-DCN Publishers
Note: DCN publishers are members of the Digital Context Next trade group.
Source: comScore
0.89
0.53

June 2017 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 131
THEDOWnSIDEOFDIGITAlWOrDOFMOuTHAnDTHEPurSuITOFMEDIAQuAlITY THEARF.ORG
CONCLUSION
With the promise of improved metrics,
marketers can be assured that a cleaner,
more transparent environment and
improved economics are within reach.
Traditional metrics of media planning and
campaign measurement—impressions,
reach, frequency, and demographic—
remain the pillars of the media buying and
selling ecosystem. A higher level of valida-
tion of these metrics should ensure that
the inventory being bought is pollutant
free, legitimate, and appearing in effective
advertising spaces.
The layers of validation needed include
• the measurement of viewable
impressions;
• sophisticated detection and removal of
invalid traffic;
• brand-safety protections (using both
black lists and white lists).
These protocols ensure that advertise-
ments can reach actual human eyeballs
within an environment that does not tar-
nish the brand.
Measurement also can go a step fur-
ther to improve what is known about
media quality as it pertains to advertising,
however:
• Is the advertisement in view and reach-
ing humans?
• Is it in a contextually relevant
environment?
• Does it appear adjacent to a brand that
delivers a halo effect?
• Is it reaching an engaged and relevant
audience?
Metrics addressing media quality and
audience attention are available and
should be used to supplement standard
media-planning variables.
Finally, achieving a more hospitable
advertising environment for both buyer
and seller demands that each player is
willing to play a role in defending against
challenges:
• Advertisers and agencies must avoid
shopping only for bargain-basement
CPMs (i.e., cost per thousand), because
these impressions often come from the
worst-offending sites as far as traffick-
ing in fake news, low-quality content, or
wholesale bot fraud.
• Publishers must resist the urge to chase
audience scale through clickbait or third-
party traffic buying that perpetuates the
deterioration of digital advertisement
buying.
• Programmatic exchanges can build in
more safeguards and filters to surface
quality inventory that produces not only
reach and impressions but engagement
and attention.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
giaN M. FulgoNi is cofounder and chief executive ofcer
of comScore, Inc. Previously, he was president and chief
executive ofcer of Information Resources, Inc. During a
career of more than 40 years at the c-level of corporate
management, he has overseen the development of
many innovative technological methods of measuring
consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness. He
is a regular contributor to the Journal of Advertising
Research.
aNdrew lipsMaN is vice president of marketing
and insights at comScore, Inc., covering multiple
industries and overseeing the company’s marketing
communications, insights, and thought-leadership
initiatives. He began his career at The NPD Group,
where he worked with clients such as Kraft Foods and
Johnson & Johnson. Lipsman specializes in social
media, e-commerce, online video, digital advertising,
and multiplatform marketing and has contributed to
the Journal of Advertising Research.
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With the promise of improved metrics, marketers
can be assured that a cleaner, more transparent
environment and improved economics are within reach.