[Term of the Day]: Dark Post
Term of the Day
"Dark Posts"
Definition — What are Dark Posts?
In social media platforms from Facebook to LinkedIn, a dark post is a targeted ad post that is oriented differently than a regular sponsored or promoted post. The dark posts pave the way for direct marketing with consumers through direct communication.
A dark post usually appears as an ad that exclusively shows up on the news feeds of targeted audiences selected by the ad publisher. This post does not appear on their Page’s timeline (hence "dark post"), nor in the feed of their followers unless they choose to target them.
The ultimate benefit of dark posts is that they offer a high degree of audience targeting (say, people who visited your website). For example, current customers or Facebook followers would probably ignore, or maybe even get a little irritated, if constantly bombarded with advertisements from a product they already use. A dark post lets you pick and choose who sees your ad, even though the content will never actually show up on your own page.
On Facebook, dark posts are referred to as unpublished posts and on Twitter they are called promoted-only tweets.