The very best point that at any time took place to social media advertising was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Due to the fact it laid bare what a lot of in social media marketing has acknowledged for a prolonged, prolonged time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are primarily based on imaginary customers, and their integrity lies someplace amongst Lucifer and that male who eats people’s faces in the motion pictures.

For advertising consultants this kind of as myself, recommending current social platforms this sort of as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has been progressively challenging, due to the fact -really frankly- a lot of of us don’t have confidence in the metrics.

And why must we? Fb isn’t going to.

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

The numbers for our essential metrics, which contain our daily active users (DAUs), regular monthly lively users (MAUs), and regular profits for every person (ARPU), are calculated utilizing internal organization knowledge based on the exercise of person accounts. While these numbers are primarily based on what we believe to be affordable estimates of our person foundation for the relevant period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring utilization of our merchandise throughout huge on-line and cellular populations around the world.
The greatest data management company in the globe states it does not actually know if its figures are precise. Estimates? What marketing and advertising skilled needs believed benefits soon after the reality?

It receives worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that duplicate accounts might have represented approximately 10% of our globally MAUs. We believe the share of duplicate accounts is meaningfully greater in building marketplaces such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as in comparison to far more created markets. In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that untrue accounts may have represented roughly three-4% of our worldwide MAUs.
Allow that sink in. Facebook is admitting that “roughly” ten% of its month-to-month lively customers are faux. Apparently, they never point out what percentage of their daily active users are phony.

And which is the problem with social media. You do not know what is actually real and what is phony any more.

Social media has not been genuine for a whilst.

As marketers and advertisers, we delight ourselves on precision. In the olden occasions of marketing and advertising and advertising, we obsessed over score numbers of tv exhibits, readership for print promotions, and shipping and delivery accomplishment rates for direct mail.

In all instances, the platforms of the working day ended up greatly audited. You knew, with fair certainty, was the audiences had been for any specific medium or channel simply because there was typically a stage of review somewhere for the figures.

Conventional media this kind of as radio, Tv, and print had been all around extended enough that there ended up hundreds of situation reports one could study the success or failures of specific strategies. Since these mediums ended up portion of the general public document, it was straightforward to perform backward to see what blend of media and price range labored and what failed to.

As an sector, we could speedily create benchmarks for achievement – not just primarily based on our individual activities- but in the collective activities of quite distinct techniques laid bare for everybody to dissect.

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

Fb, Twitter, and Instagram’s quantities had been usually a joke.

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

instagram panel modified when somebody arrived up with the principle of “day-to-day active users.”

The race to obtain users turned the driving drive for social media platforms in a way that we have in no way observed ahead of. Now, the obsession with consumer development opened the door to promoting and marketing and advertising fraud on a scale that just was not attainable earlier.

Let’s get something very clear: any system that enables for men and women to create thousands of fake profiles so other people can purchase likes, followers, retweets, or shares is harmful to advertisers and makes alike.

Now, I realize that the phrase “permits” is carrying out a great deal of operate in that sentence, so permit me grow a bit what I suggest.

I don’t feel I will get many arguments when I say that -irrespective of what I consider of them- the most profitable social media platforms on the world are also some of the most refined technological enterprises on the earth. They have -arguably- some of the greatest AI about, as their whole business designs revolve about getting able to crunch numbers, specifics, and obscure parts of data tens of millions of instances a 2nd.

They are also enormous companies, with an army of lawyers and IP bulldogs ready to defend their brand name in opposition to any hostile outdoors forces.

So make clear to me, how is it, that even right after all we have observed in the news people can still acquire Facebook likes, or Twitter followers, or Instagram followers?

The explanation: it was always a scam. And we acquired conned alongside with absolutely everyone else.

If your firm is valued on your number of customers and the action of these users on your platform, what do you care if they are fake or not? If you did, you would hire an armada of auditors to make certain the integrity of your userbase. I will not believe they ever did and will in no way do this.