The best issue that ever transpired to social media marketing and advertising was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Because it laid bare what a lot of in social media advertising has acknowledged for a long, long time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are dependent on imaginary customers, and their integrity lies someplace among Lucifer and that guy who eats people’s faces in the videos.

For marketing consultants these kinds of as myself, recommending present social platforms these kinds of as Fb, Twitter, and Instagram has been increasingly difficult, since -fairly frankly- numerous of us never believe in the metrics.

And why should we? Fb does not.

This is from Facebook’s 2017 SEC filing (emphasis mine):

The quantities for our key metrics, which contain our everyday active end users (DAUs), month to month energetic users (MAUs), and common profits for every user (ARPU), are calculated using inner organization data based on the exercise of consumer accounts. Although these quantities are based on what we believe to be sensible estimates of our user foundation for the relevant time period of measurement, there are inherent issues in measuring utilization of our merchandise across massive on the web and cellular populations around the entire world.
The greatest data management business in the entire world says it isn’t going to truly know if its numbers are precise. Estimates? What Buy Instagram Likes and marketing expert would like approximated results following the simple fact?

It gets worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that replicate accounts may possibly have represented around 10% of our worldwide MAUs. We think the share of replicate accounts is meaningfully greater in developing markets this kind of as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as in contrast to more produced marketplaces. In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that untrue accounts may possibly have represented roughly three-4% of our worldwide MAUs.
Permit that sink in. Facebook is admitting that “approximately” ten% of its month-to-month active end users are bogus. Apparently, they will not point out what share of their every day active end users are bogus.

And that’s the problem with social media. You don’t know what is actually real and what is actually bogus any longer.

Social media has not been true for a although.

As entrepreneurs and advertisers, we pride ourselves on precision. In the olden times of marketing and advertising and marketing, we obsessed over ranking quantities of tv demonstrates, readership for print promotions, and shipping success rates for direct mail.

In all situations, the platforms of the day ended up heavily audited. You knew, with honest certainty, was the audiences ended up for any certain medium or channel since there was normally a point of review someplace for the numbers.

Traditional media such as radio, Television, and print experienced been all around extended sufficient that there have been hundreds of case studies one particular could review the accomplishment or failures of person strategies. Since these mediums have been component of the general public file, it was easy to work backward to see what mix of media and price range labored and what failed to.

As an business, we could swiftly build benchmarks for success – not just dependent on our personalized ordeals- but in the collective activities of quite obvious methods laid bare for everybody to dissect.

Well, that all went out the window with social media.

Fb, Twitter, and Instagram’s numbers ended up always a joke.

In times of yore, firm valuation was based mostly on revenues, assets, and human money, and overall performance.

That all altered when somebody arrived up with the principle of “daily lively consumers.”

The race to acquire customers became the driving power for social media platforms in a way that we have by no means noticed ahead of. Now, the obsession with consumer progress opened the door to marketing and marketing and advertising fraud on a scale that just wasn’t achievable previously.

Let us get some thing obvious: any platform that allows for men and women to produce thousands of phony profiles so other folks can buy likes, followers, retweets, or shares is poisonous to advertisers and makes alike.

Now, I comprehend that the term “permits” is carrying out a good deal of work in that sentence, so let me expand a little bit what I mean.

I don’t believe I’ll get a lot of arguments when I say that -no matter of what I believe of them- the most profitable social media platforms on the earth are also some of the most advanced technological enterprises on the planet. They have -arguably- some of the very best AI all around, as their whole business types revolve around being able to crunch numbers, details, and obscure pieces of information tens of millions of times a second.

They are also enormous companies, with an army of attorneys and IP bulldogs waiting to protect their manufacturer towards any hostile exterior forces.

So describe to me, how is it, that even after all we have seen in the news folks can even now get Facebook likes, or Twitter followers, or Instagram fans?

The cause: it was constantly a fraud. And we got conned together with everyone else.

If your company is valued on your number of end users and the action of individuals users on your platform, what do you treatment if they are bogus or not? If you did, you’d hire an armada of auditors to ensure the integrity of your userbase. I don’t think they ever did and will in no way do this.