Social media is filled with ads and campaigns. We scroll through reels on Instagram and for every 10 reels we at least see one ad that matches the algorithm and our interest. This typically encourages us to open the websites further and reach the brand’s landing page. This is when we end up purchasing products that we might like and also share links with our friends. This sharing of links with our friends through private messaging, emails or group conversations other than traditional social media channels is described as “Dark Social”.
This is usually done by people to share the content among their friends and family when it is not shareable through a direct link. However, this makes the tracking of ad impressions and conversion rates difficult as most of the ad trackers are designed to track activities through traditional social media sharing. This will impact in a way that sellers and brand owners will not be able to understand the user behaviour and not know how the sales were made. For any ad strategy to continue, the ad agency needs to know how the strategy works or what improvements need to be made. The possibility of this is only through ad tracking.
Dark Social phenomenon was discovered by Alexis C. Madrigal in 2012. It is said that this accounts for a significant proportion of online sharing, with estimates suggesting that 80% of social sharing occurs in the form of dark sharing.
How to mitigate Dark Social –
Dealing with dark social involves strategies to mitigate its impact on your marketing efforts and gain a better understanding of how your content is being shared. Here are some approaches –
- Using shortened URL links is a very popular way of mitigating the effect of this form of sharing. This can help track the click and share effectively even in the dark channels.
- Another effective way is to incorporate social sharing buttons in the website or the landing page itself. This will be very useful in calculating the number of shares that were done through the website since they happened through an option of the website. Moreover, keeping track of the metrics will also become easier.
- Utilize analytics tools that offer advanced tracking capabilities, such as UTM parameters. These can help differentiate between direct traffic and dark social traffic.
- Actively engage with your audience and urge them to share the content through the links provided on the website or through the sharing options on the website.
- Optimize your content for sharing by making it easily shareable and providing clear calls to action. This can help decrease the likelihood of dark social shares.
- Keep an eye on your website metrics and traffic. In case there is a high spike in the traffic in spite of low impressions on the ad then it is more likely to be a result of the dark social. This way you can monitor the phenomenon more easily.
Wrapping it up –
Dark social can be a bummer for advertising agencies and businesses online since it can cause discrepancies in impressions and conversion rates. You can easily combat it by shortening the URLs, using social sharing buttons, and analytical tools, engaging with your audience, content optimization and monitoring the traffic on the website. Make sure you use a proper CTA so that people can not only open the website and reach the landing page but also share the website through social media using that CTA. This will reduce the trouble of breaking heads over the non-aligning data of ad results.