Dive Brief:
- Dark social—a term coined by Atlantic journalist Alexis Madrigal—has become a hot topic among marketers.
- It refers to content that is shared person-to-person -- via email, direct messaging, etc., and it accounts for approximately 69% of all online sharing activities.
- Marketers are searching for ways to track the activity through methods like codes in URLs and tracking through messaging apps. If conquered, the light shed on dark social could make it as important as word-of-mouth.
Dive Insight:
Last year saw a spike in dark social, with the rise of Snapchat and the Facebook messenger app exceeding expectations. Even though it's been established that dark social is important to marketing going forward, big challenges still lie ahead. Until marketers are able to determine a way to track person-to-person sharing —without major privacy violations—the social will indeed remain dark. This could be the challenge for marketers in the coming year.