Meaning of dark social | Babel Free

Definitions

Interactions via the World Wide Web that cannot be publicly viewed, tracked or logged, such as private messages, texts and e-mails.

Internet, uncountable

Examples

“This means that this vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs. I call it DARK SOCIAL [author's capitalsation]. It shows up variously in programs as "direct" or "typed/bookmarked" traffic, which implies to many site owners that you actually have a bookmark or typed in www.theatlantic.com into your browser. But that's not actually what's happening a lot of the time. Most of the time, someone Gchatted someone a link, or it came in on a big email distribution list, or your dad sent it to you.”

“According to a RadiumOne study, almost 70% of all online referrals come from dark social globally. For the UK, this figure increases to 75%.”

“This shift in consumer behaviour underlines how much marketing now comes through social media, and specifically dark social.”

“Dark social has a profound impact on social and digital marketing strategies. It evades the reach of standard tracking tools and obscures a significant portion of consumer behavior and interaction, leading to incomplete or skewed data on customer engagement, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and even conversion paths.”

CEFR level