Although many brands are looking to tap into the power of influencers on public social networks, for example, savvy marketers are beginning to explore the opportunity of reaching consumers through private social channels such as messaging apps, sometimes referred to as 'dark social'.

It's increasing the demand for "dark social" apps that provide ways to talk through on digital media without leaving an easily traceable footprint. Snapchat's messages disappear after being seen or read (although not necessarily securely). Meanwhile, Yahoo's new LiveText livestream video chat service will also have conversation delete after the user closes the session.

It’s important to mention that Dark Social refers to web traffic stemming from sources that cannot be tracked by analytics software. It occurs when users share content or links via communication platforms including emails, instant messages and forum posts, representing three times the social sharing activity of Facebook.

This means that this vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs. I call it DARK SOCIAL.