Dark social is about messaging that sidesteps social media and cannot be measured accurately. The term was coined by Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, in a 2012 article. One could be forgiven for confusing the term with a disturbing mass of overlay networks, authorisations, configurations and illicit purchasing of drugs, or worse. But messaging becomes “dark” for brands as we increasingly receive – and forward – messages in WhatsApp, Snapchat, SMS, secure browsers and even e-mail. While traffic will continue to show up on the actual website, the referrer website is largely untrackable. And therein lies the challenge, especially for marketers and search engine optimisation (SEOs) specialists who need to prove their worth to clients. Dark social puts obstacles in the way of straight-line measurement, as this social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programmes. Without a clearly attributable source of statistics, clients and marketers will have...
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