Analytics nightmare: 82 percent of mobile sharing is done through dark social

RadiumOne based the numbers on the actions of the 940 million people globally on the platform.

Dark social, or dark traffic, is a rising issue for publishers as they try to get a handle on traffic patterns. This is exacerbated by the adoption of secure encryption technologies by sites and services, making referral traffic harder to pin down.

Daniel Price, head of social operations at Lost Boys, said clients are trying to get their head around dark social, but the shift to building directly on platforms could make it unimportant. “By building functionality and utility into Facebook Messenger, it becomes more of a web platform than a social messaging app.”