{"id":8594,"date":"2020-10-21T10:34:30","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T14:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=8594"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:45:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T16:45:54","slug":"what-is-dark-social","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/what-is-dark-social\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Dark Social?"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Okay, if even the sound<\/em> of the term \u201cdark social\u201d sends you running to tighten those parental restrictions on your kids\u2019 iPads, let\u2019s pump those breaks. The name sounds a lot more nefarious than what it actually refers to\u2014there\u2019s no radicalization or conspiracy theories happening here. But this ubiquitous problem might be of great concern to marketers. Allow us to explain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDark social media\u201d is a term that refers to social shares of online content without any referral information about the source. These shares happen in private channels, like personal messaging platforms. For example, remember the last time you clicked a link that a buddy passed along a link to your group chat, or checked out a blog post that your boss shared in Slack? That\u2019s dark social. It\u2019s not necessarily a new concept\u2014the term was coined by Alexis Madrigal in this 2012 article<\/a> for The Atlantic<\/em>. But it\u2019s becoming an increasingly important focus for marketers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs,\u201d Madrigal wrote in the piece. \u201cIt shows up variously in programs as \u2018direct\u2019 or \u2018typed\/bookmarked\u2019 traffic, which implies to many site owners that you actually have a bookmark or typed [the domain name] into your browser. But that’s not actually what’s happening a lot of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madrigal\u2019s analysis of a coalition of media sites found that almost 69 percent of social referrals were dark\u2014meaning that there was really no way to pinpoint exactly how two-thirds of all social views <\/em>were sourced. More recent estimates suggest that dark social might have an even larger impact in the present day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier last week in a session<\/a> at Advertising Week 2020, Brendan Gahan identified dark social as one of the largest opportunities on the horizon for brands looking to build stronger communities. Gahan, partner and chief social officer at advertising agency Mekanism, cited research that showed dark social representing 80 to 87 percent of all social shares worldwide. Dark social platforms like messaging apps (iMessage, GroupMe, WhatsApp, and the like) are where humans spend most of their time, he says, but that opportunity is largely untapped by brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re over-indexing on Facebook,\u201d Gahan said to sum up, \u201cand there\u2019s a huge, huge opportunity here with dark social.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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