RadiumOne’s first Southeast Asia release of ‘dark social’ trends shows that email and IM sharing is a larger consumer sharing channel than all public social network sharing combined.

“Dark social” is where consumers share text, images and links into emails or instant messages, and selectively share with their ‘intimate social networks’ - friends, family and colleagues - rather than posting onto public social networks.

RadiumOne Managing Director for APAC, Kerry McCabe, explained that for each dark social share, the content and the people it’s being shared with are selected for a very specific reason.

“The study has shown us that dark social is too big to ignore in Southeast Asia where it accounts for 90% of consumer online sharing of a brands content,” said Kerry.

“This is a large and valuable new marketing channel for 2016 and a critical piece of the marketing puzzle that connects the investment brands are making into owned and earned channels with paid media effectiveness.

“In other parts of the world we see this channel as particularly effective for prospecting and lead generation where brands are gathering and activating this data programmatically,” he added.

In October 2015, RadiumOne social data found that in Southeast Asia:

• 90% of all shares across Southeast Asia are via email and instant messaging (dark social).

• Hong Kong consumers share the most content via dark social channels, with 93% of sharing behavior occurring through instant messenger and email, closely followed by Malaysia (91%) and Indonesia (90%).

• The Philippines is the most active sharing nation, and also the most receptive to shared content.  In October 2015, consumers in the Philippines generated more clicks on shared content than all other SEA countries.

“Harnessing sharing behavior across email and IM offers significant opportunities for brands to reach a previously untapped audience,” said McCabe.

Research firm TNS recently backed this up, releasing a report that shows instant messaging users in Asia are far more active than social media users, with 61% of internet users in Asia using chat apps every day, compared to 43% using social networks daily*.

iflix, Southeast Asia’s fastest growing subscription-based Internet TV service, recently utilized live social data in its launch campaign, which was designed to gather and activate data on engaged entertainment lovers and their intimate social networks.

Since May, the ‘always on’ fully automated iflix campaign has seen over half (52%) of all new subscribers to the streaming service converted through targeting refined via learnings from “dark social” sharing data.
Mark Britt, iflix Group CEO said, “We knew that whilst these entertainment lovers shared high volumes of digital content with each other, there was also a lot of sharing occurring outside of public social networks via IM and other private channels”.

"By harnessing dark social to complement our existing strategies, we cover all bases, and ensure we have a comprehensive view of consumer sharing behaviour across all channels and devices, whilst protecting the privacy of our most important stakeholders: our customers,” he added.

By RadiumOne