The ideal thing that at any time occurred to social media advertising and marketing was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Since it laid bare what many in social media advertising and marketing has identified for a extended, extended time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are based mostly on imaginary end users, and their integrity lies somewhere amongst Lucifer and that man who eats people’s faces in the movies.

For marketing consultants these kinds of as myself, recommending current social platforms these kinds of as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has been increasingly hard, because -really frankly- many of us do not have confidence in the metrics.

And why should we? Fb isn’t going to.

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

The numbers for our key metrics, which contain our everyday lively consumers (DAUs), month-to-month active consumers (MAUs), and common income for every person (ARPU), are calculated making use of inside organization data based mostly on the action of consumer accounts. Even though these quantities are based mostly on what we think to be sensible estimates of our consumer foundation for the applicable period of time of measurement, there are inherent issues in measuring utilization of our goods throughout large on the web and mobile populations close to the entire world.
The largest knowledge management firm in the globe states it does not actually know if its figures are precise. Estimates? What advertising specialist wants believed results right after the truth?

It will get even worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that copy accounts might have represented around 10% of our around the world MAUs. We imagine the proportion of duplicate accounts is meaningfully larger in building marketplaces these kinds of as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as compared to far more developed markets. In smm panels list of 2017, we estimate that untrue accounts may have represented about 3-4% of our globally MAUs.
Enable that sink in. Fb is admitting that “around” ten% of its regular monthly active customers are phony. Apparently, they will not mention what proportion of their day-to-day lively customers are phony.

And that is the difficulty with social media. You will not know what’s genuine and what’s bogus any longer.

Social media has not been actual for a although.

As marketers and advertisers, we delight ourselves on precision. In the olden times of marketing and advertising and advertising, we obsessed more than score numbers of tv displays, readership for print promotions, and shipping success costs for direct mail.

In all situations, the platforms of the working day were seriously audited. You realized, with reasonable certainty, was the audiences have been for any particular medium or channel since there was typically a stage of evaluation somewhere for the figures.

Conventional media these kinds of as radio, Television set, and print had been close to extended adequate that there have been 1000’s of scenario research one particular could study the success or failures of individual campaigns. Simply because these mediums were component of the public document, it was simple to work backward to see what combine of media and price range labored and what didn’t.

As an industry, we could swiftly establish benchmarks for good results – not just dependent on our personalized ordeals- but in the collective ordeals of really clear strategies laid bare for every person to dissect.

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

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram’s numbers ended up often a joke.

In days of yore, organization valuation was based mostly on revenues, belongings, and human capital, and efficiency.

That all altered when an individual came up with the notion of “every day active users.”

The race to gain customers turned the driving power for social media platforms in a way that we have never observed before. Now, the obsession with person growth opened the doorway to promoting and marketing and advertising fraud on a scale that just was not possible earlier.

Let’s get anything obvious: any system that makes it possible for for individuals to develop 1000’s of phony profiles so other people can purchase likes, followers, retweets, or shares is poisonous to advertisers and makes alike.

Now, I recognize that the word “makes it possible for” is carrying out a good deal of work in that sentence, so permit me increase a bit what I suggest.

I don’t believe I’ll get several arguments when I say that -no matter of what I feel of them- the most productive social media platforms on the earth are also some of the most innovative technological enterprises on the earth. They have -arguably- some of the best AI all around, as their complete enterprise versions revolve around becoming capable to crunch quantities, information, and obscure parts of information hundreds of thousands of occasions a 2nd.

They are also enormous businesses, with an army of legal professionals and IP bulldogs waiting around to safeguard their manufacturer in opposition to any hostile outside the house forces.

So describe to me, how is it, that even following all we have witnessed in the news men and women can nonetheless get Facebook likes, or Twitter followers, or Instagram fans?

The reason: it was always a scam. And we got conned along with every person else.

If your organization is valued on your number of consumers and the activity of individuals customers on your system, what do you care if they are bogus or not? If you did, you’d employ the service of an armada of auditors to make sure the integrity of your userbase. I do not believe they ever did and will by no means do this.