Quantcast
MarkLives.com

MarkLives.com

Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs

  • Home
  • Sections
    • Adland
    • #CoronavirusSA
    • Media
    • Marketing
    • S’HOT
    • Tech
    • Archive
  • Columns
    • #AdChamps – Kyle & Morgan
    • #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
    • Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
    • Big Q – MarkLives Panel
    • Campaigns – MarkLives
    • Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
    • Clicks ‘n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
    • #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
    • Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
    • #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
    • Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
    • Extracts — Books & research
    • Fair Exchange – Erna George
    • Hard Relate – David Alves
    • Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
    • Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
    • Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
    • Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
    • Mission – Tom Fels
    • Motive – By Invitation Only
    • #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
    • Press Pass – Carey Finn
    • Q5 – Carey Finn
    • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
    • #TheInterlocker – Emma King
    • The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
    • The Power Report – Megan Power
    • The Suit – Jason Harrison
    • Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
    • #Transformers Transform 2020
    • Watched – Richard Lord
    • #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
    • WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
    • Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
    • Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
  • Find an Agency
    • Shortlist & Compare Agencies
    • List your Agency
    • List as Agency Supplier/Service
    • Register as a Marketer
    • Company News Feed
    • Upgrade to Ramify Premium
    • RamifyPRO
    • Add Premium to Cart
  • Data
    • Agency Revenue Rankings 2019
    • Agency Salary Survey
    • Biggest SA consumer magazines
    • Biggest newspapers in SA
    • The 50 most-valuable brands in SA
    • Top 50 SA advertisers 2016
    • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
  • Careers
    • Advertising
    • Digital
    • Marketing
    • Media
    • Public Relations
    • View All
  • About
    • About & Contact
    • Advertise
    • Business supporters
    • Privacy Policy
    • Readership
    • Submissions
  • Partners
    • Brands & Branding
    • Brands & Branding – Profiles
    • Retailing Africa
    • Retailer/Supplier profiles
    • Ramify.biz
Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
Based on Halloween Background by taeya18 courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos

Clicks ’n Tricks: Taking digital to the dark side

  •   28 Jun 2017
  •   0
Share

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) Most contemporary marketers are familiar with the dark web — it’s the password-protected place inhabited by monsters who peddle terrorism, drugs and many other heinous unmentionables. It’s a part of the internet few of us want to have any association with. But how many of us have heard of, or are actively engaging with, dark social?

No, I’m not referring to Black Twitter, nor am I speaking of the place that Schweizer Reneke hockey mums post saucy images.

Dark social is a growing nuisance for digital marketers who are keen to attribute the source of web traffic and its potential to deliver online sales. It refers to the untrackable sharing of content through social media channels. And, like the dark web, which is way larger than the internet most of us use, the amount of traffic from dark social shares dwarfs the regular sharing of content.

If someone clicks a link to your website from an open platform such as Twitter or Facebook, analytics programmes will generally tell you where that referral visit came from.

Attribution atrophy

But, as the popularity of private messaging apps such as Snapchat and WhatsApp has grown, so too has the amount of web-content people are sharing through these media. The trouble is that links shared this way lack referral tags, so platforms such as Google Analytics attribute their visits to ‘direct’ traffic, encouraging us to make false assumptions about their source.

According to research from Radium One, some 84% of onsite shares (where someone copies a URL and pastes it into email or a messaging app while reading a piece of content) happen over dark social channels — not surprisingly, much of this is coming from mobile.

Now, we’re all aware that Facebook is a huge source of traffic for most websites. Yet RadiumOne found that only 11% of site-originated mobile shares and 21% of mobile clickbacks happened worldwide via Facebook. Put another way, dark social gives seven times the number of site-originated mobile shares that the world’s largest social media giant hands out.

Why is this a problem?

A simple, personal, example will shed some light. The other day, waiting in the airport lounge for a flight, I decided to find a new clock for my kitchen.

I typed a couple of queries into Google and clicked on a paid ad for a well-known a local retailer. After browsing through a few pages, I saw something I liked and used the email share feature on the product page to send a link to my wife. A little later, she clicked through from her laptop and bought it.

When the retailer looks at its funnel attribution, it’ll see that she made a purchase after visiting just one page from a desktop device via a direct traffic source. What it won’t see is that the sale had a gigantic assist from (and was arguably generated by) paid search on a mobile device.

And if that’s happening with other customers, it pretty much stuffs up the clever attribution modelling that digital marketers use to justify ROI.

So what to do about it?

The challenge is that there’s no real solution. That said, it would be remiss to not gauge the scale of the problem. Doing this is relatively easy. All you need to do is open your analytics platform and run a filter to show the landing pages that attract direct traffic. It’s fair to say that any long links (such as /contemporary-metal-clock-60cm-7404010870) weren’t typed in manually, so they probably came from dark social.

While this won’t help you determine how the content was originally shared/which channels assisted the conversion, it’ll shed some light on how much dark social traffic you may be receiving, and it might give you some ammunition the next time someone questions the value of your spend on other channels when direct’s apparently doing so well.

As with the retailer I visited, you could include sharing buttons on your site to encourage people to share content using these, rather than copying and pasting the link. But, even if these have UTM tags, the likelihood is that any traffic source data that these carry will be stripped out if visitors are directed to a secure (https) website.

So, for the time being, we’re in the dark. But, with growing awareness of the challenge, it’s unlikely to be long before some bright spark comes up with a solution.

 

Charlie StewartCharlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) is CEO of Rogerwilco, a multi-award-winning independent digital agency best known for its expertise with Drupal, SEO and content marketing. A Scot by birth, he moved to South Africa in the early 2000s in his quest to support a winning rugby team — a search he’s reluctantly forsaken. Together with Mark Eardley, he co-authored Business to Business Marketing: A Step by Step Guide, (Penguin Random House, 2016) and may be found on LinkedIn. Charlie contributes the monthly “Clicks ‘n Tricks” column, which looks at how brands are using digital channels to engage their customers, to MarkLives.

— Sign up now for the MarkLives email newsletter every Monday and Thursday, now including headlines from the Ramify.biz company newsroom service!

Share

Columns

  • #AdChamps – Kyle de Waal & Morgan Botha
    #AdChamps – Kyle de Waal & Morgan Botha
  • #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
    #AgencyLeaders – Most Admired Poll
  • #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
    #CoronavirusSA – Special Section
  • #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
    #CustomerFirst – Craig Hannabus
  • #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
    #NotSoOrdinary – Taazima Kala-Essack
  • #TheInterlocker – Emma King
    #TheInterlocker – Emma King
  • #Transformers Transform 2020
    #Transformers Transform 2020
  • #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
    #WritersBlock – Tiffany Markman
  • An Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
    An Accountant in Adland – Siwe Lawrence
  • Big Q – MarkLives Panel
    Big Q – MarkLives Panel
  • Big Reads on MarkLives
    Big Reads on MarkLives
  • By Invitation Only – Motive
    By Invitation Only – Motive
  • Campaigns – MarkLives
    Campaigns – MarkLives
  • Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
    Circulation Data – ABC Analysis
  • Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
    Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart
  • Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
    Curiosity – Marguerite Coetzee
  • Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
    Dear Radio – Paulo Dias
  • Extracts — Books & Research
    Extracts — Books & Research
  • Fair Exchange – Erna George
    Fair Exchange – Erna George
  • Hard Relate – David Alves
    Hard Relate – David Alves
  • Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
    Herding Words – Wendy Shepherd
  • Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
    Hermaneutics – Herman Manson
  • Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
    Masterclass Notes – Johanna McDowell
  • Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
    Media Redefined – Martin MacGregor
  • Mission – Tom Fels
    Mission – Tom Fels
  • Press Pass – Carey Finn
    Press Pass – Carey Finn
  • Q5 – Carey Finn
    Q5 – Carey Finn
  • SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
    SA TV Ratings – MarkLives
  • Spotlight – MarkLives
    Spotlight – MarkLives
  • The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
    The Martini Shot – Bobby Amm
  • The Power Report – Megan Power
    The Power Report – Megan Power
  • The Suit – Jason Harrison
    The Suit – Jason Harrison
  • Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
    Thinking B2B – Warren Moss
  • Watched – Richard Lord
    Watched – Richard Lord
  • WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
    WTF?! – Leigh Tayler
  • Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
    Young, Gifted & Killing It – Veli Ngubane
  • Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
    Zeitgeist of Now – Jason Stewart
  • View All
  • Mid-Weight Brand Manager: Global South African Brand
    15 Jan 2021
  • Senior Graphic Designer: Super TTL Ad Agency
    14 Jan 2021
  • Email Marketing Strategist – Remote for US company
    13 Jan 2021
  • PR, Partnerships & Influencer Manager: International Brand
    13 Jan 2021
  • Growth Marketer & Paid Acquisition Specialist: Global Brand
    13 Jan 2021
  • Amazon Specialist: Global Hearing Protection Brand
    13 Jan 2021
  • Creative Director: In House Agency
    13 Jan 2021
  • Brand Manager: Leading Décor Brand: In-House
    12 Jan 2021
  • Senior Account Manager: 6-Month Contract
    12 Jan 2021
  • Motion Graphic Designer
    7 Jan 2021
  • Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.

    No comments yet.

    Related News

    Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart, Columns, Featured, Media, Tech The Social Dilemma

    Clicks ’n Tricks: The Social Dilemma reviewed — a curse on your house

    23 Sep 2020
    Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart, Columns, Featured, Tech frustrated-sad-stress-depressed-man by Shiv Mirthyu courtesy of Pixabay

    Clicks ’n Tricks: The frustrating opacity of customer acquisition

    2 Sep 2020
    #CoronavirusSA, Clicks ’n Tricks – Charlie Stewart, Columns, Featured, Tech, Watch IG shop checkout with troy-horse-trojan-war-greece by Darelle courtesy of Pixabay

    Clicks ’n Tricks: Shop ’til Facebook drops you #coronavirusSA

    6 Jul 2020
    Facebook
    Like us on Facebook
    Twitter
    Follow us on Twitter
    Google Plus
    Add us on Google Plus
    YouTube
    Join us on YouTube
    Pinterest
    Follow us on Pinterest
    Subscribe Newsletter

    Get our round-up of top ad and media industry news every Monday and Thursday.

    Online CPD Courses Psychology Online CPD Courses Marketing analytics software Marketing analytics software for small business Business management software Business accounting software Gearbox repair company Makeup artist