Dark social dominates holiday sharing [RadiumOne data]

Survey of 1,000 consumers points to the importance of email and messaging for sharing of holiday-related content.

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A majority of consumers will share holiday-related content during the holiday season, but marketers will have a hard time tracking most of it, according to a new survey from RadiumOne.

The company’s Holiday Consumer Behavior Data Report shows that 72 percent of consumers will share some kind of holiday content online — primarily photos, but videos, gift ideas, sales-related content and holiday recipes are also popular.

It’s probably no shock that holiday sharing peaks around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to RadiumOne’s survey, sharing on those two days is about twice as high as the average for the rest of the holiday season. Halloween and Christmas Eve are the most quiet days when it comes to social sharing.

radiumone-sharing-timeline

But brands and marketers may have trouble tracking all of this holiday-related social sharing to a specific source. According to the survey, about 10X as much sharing will happen on “dark social” — i.e., things like email, text and instant messaging — than on Facebook, the most prominent individual social network.

radiumone-dark-social

RadiumOne surveyed 1,000 consumers in North America and Europe who were recruited from the MindMover Connect panel, asking them 40-plus questions via online survey.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
Contributor
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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