Venture Beat just published a cool info graphic about effective social sharing.

Our pattern recognition skills, such as they are, were piqued by the section of the graphic showing what hours of the day and which days of the week content sharing is most effective.

Here it is:

This graphic maps almost exactly to signup clusters for many of the clients we are working with now. It also maps well with a company we worked for in the past so we’ll use that example.

What time of day do people decide they need to start renting DVDs online? They signup between 8:30 and 10:30 and then again between 12 and 14:00. (There is, actually, another bump later in the evening.)

And in the mid-aughts, Monday was the DVD renting-ist day of the week.

This graphic demonstrates the power of day-part targeting. It is simple, it is effective and it is almost never used. (Not a huge surprise given the industry’s persistent difficulty with something as simple as frequency capping.)

Looking at a graph like this also begs the question – whats up with the robots? All the adtech algorithmic, behavioral hoodoo is good for attracting VC money. But it is an overly complex solution to a problem that might be more effectively addressed using hopelessly lame legacy tech – your watch. Lex parsimoniae and see also: Anglo-American cognitive bias toward technology

As the industry laments recent EU privacy decisions – throwing its hands in the air, “don’t take our cookies!” – decidedly old fashioned but effective targeting alternatives exist.