What’s new in the realms of paid search and social media? This month, Amy Rumpler, SVP of Search & Social Media Services, compiled all the latest news, trends, and resources for easy access.
New insights from Google show that deal-seeking for holiday shopping happens throughout October and November—so position your brand by extending the shopping window, starting now! Google also found that holiday shoppers are less impulsive than you might think: They do their research early, watch for sales to begin, and care more about delivering a thoughtful gift than finding the best deal.
Speaking of holiday shopping, Meta is adding new ad optimization tools to its Business Manager suite, aimed at giving better control to advertisers looking to maximize performance in Q4. For example, a new time-based budget scheduling option was announced, which lets advertisers automatically increase spending for specific dates and time periods such as Black Friday, rather than having to manually adjust budgets or schedule separate campaigns and risk interrupting overall optimization learnings.
As TikTok Shop was introduced to users across the US this month, the platform has taken steps to educate marketers, brand representatives, and agencies on their ability to drive sales directly through the app. TikTok’s foray into retail is heating up in advance of Black Friday and the holiday shopping season, and stands to make big waves in the coming years: eMarketer forecasts that m-commerce will account for half of US e-commerce sales in 2027, driven by social commerce and, in particular, TikTok’s Shoppable Ads.
TikTok’s new Attribution Analytics is meant to help marketers understand the bottom line impact of TikTok advertising. Users on the platform are often inspired by content on TikTok but don’t always act to purchase until much later—an estimated 79% of TikTok-influenced conversions are missing from last-click attribution models. Attribution Analytics gives marketers an understanding of conversions across different time windows, view-through conversions, and other granular insights that a singular click-based lens doesn’t account for.
Nearly two in five social media users admit they’ve made an impulse purchase of a product they saw on social media in the last year, with the average shopper spending $754 on those purchases. Millennials spent even more, averaging a little over $1,000 in purchases. Sadly, over half of those shoppers regretted at least one of their impulse purchases afterward, indicating it’s not just the first purchase but what brands do to win and retain customer loyalty that matters (assuming, of course, that maximizing lifetime customer value is your endgame).
YouTube's new AI feature evaluates best practices in creative, such as logo usage, video duration, voiceovers, and aspect ratios, and then recommends "ideas to try." The feature will fully launch as part of a new Google Ads experience in 2024.
YouTube’s annual report discusses how changes in technology, content creation, and consumption have impacted both creators and viewers across the platform this year. For example, trends like fan-remixed content and AI-enhanced video have taken hold, leading to new levels of creativity. In fact, more than 82% of people online between the ages of 18 and 44 have posted videos in the last year, showing that content creation is for everyone, not just large, popular channels.
The Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes this year brought Hollywood to a halt, creating new opportunities for social media influencers to fill the content and entertainment void. eMarketer has projected that influencer marketing will grow 3.5 times faster this year than conventional social spending, but we’re now seeing some influencers branch out beyond social content distribution to create their own multi-channel media brands—and ad dollars could follow.
Pinterest shared quite a few updates and announcements at their annual Pinterest Presents summit this month. Most notable to advertisers are a slew of features designed to help connect better with audiences across their entire Pinterest experience. While not all features are available yet globally, many are now rolling out across the US. Also announced at the summit: new ad formats, integrations, and content tools.
While social media users appear to be posting less original content, engagement with stories and most platforms continues to grow, creating an opportunity for advertisers. In fact, research shows people spend more time on social media platforms than ever before, although time spent has shifted toward checking feeds, viewing influencer content, engaging in DMs, and interacting with short-form videos.
Ever wondered how Google generates autocomplete options when users enter a search query? This piece offers a useful overview of the AI that fuels the engine. Spoiler alert: It isn't perfect, but there is a way for brands to report a negative or false keyword.
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Digital healthcare. Personalized medicine. Artificial intelligence. Like the broader healthcare landscape, the pharmaceutical industry is in the midst of quite a technological revolution! While many of these innovations present new and exciting opportunities for pharma brands, digital marketers may be feeling a bit of whiplash from the speed with which they're taking hold.
And it’s not just pharmaceutical systems and tools that are changing. The marketing landscape is evolving as well, as marketing teams prioritize the adoption of digital technologies and channels that grant them more granularity, precision, and efficiency. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry is projected to see an over 40% increase in digital advertising spend from 2021 to 2024.
To understand the biggest opportunities in the pharma marketing space right now, we spoke with Ryan Sperry, VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis Technologies. With a decade’s worth of digital marketing experience, and specific expertise within the pharma space, Ryan has a deep understanding of how marketers can adapt to the complex landscape and set their campaigns apart.
Read on for Ryan's top insights for pharmaceutical marketing in 2023:
Ryan Sperry: I’d say the need for taking an omnichannel approach, which focuses on creating a seamless, holistic customer experience across all the channels where an audience spends time. It's not a new concept—omnichannel marketing has been around in media for quite a while, especially with digital. But traditionally in the pharma sector, there’s been a focus on a multi-channel approach, and just hitting patients in different places without a cohesive strategy. Now, there's a growing focus on omnichannel, and that’s true for both healthcare provider (HCP) and patient targeting.
On the patient side, this is especially important because a lot of consumers these days are doing their own research to figure out what healthcare decisions they want to make. They expect ads to speak to them directly with content that makes sense based on where they fall in the patient journey. Marketers in the pharma industry are starting to realize that with a targeted and data-driven approach, they can tailor their targeting and creative to do more to maximize ROI.
To start transitioning into an omnichannel approach, it’s helpful to look at where you’re reaching someone in the patient journey, as well as where patients are first being introduced to the brand. Are you reengaging them after they've visited your website? Are you reengaging them when they're at the doctor's office? The idea here is for your marketing strategy to be cohesive, rather than just a bunch of different branding ads in a bunch of different places.
RS: Patients are gaining more and more power when it comes to healthcare decision-making. There’s even a good chance that they will soon have the ability to automate their diagnoses by entering data into AI-driven personalized medicine platforms. And, with the rise of personalized health tools like fitness trackers, patients also have new data to work with that makes it easier for them to self-diagnose. As pharmaceutical technology and patient enablement increase with AI innovations, patients will have even more agency to make health decisions before they even step foot in a doctor’s office.
This is something pharma marketers will need to pay attention to, because these developments will push people into even more contextually relevant digital spaces. As patient behavior changes (along with the spaces in which those patients spend their time, be it condition-specific centers or telehealth platforms), marketers will need to keep tabs on the shifts and adjust their strategies accordingly.
RS: Having the right measurement structures in place. As with any campaign, it’s important to go beyond front-end metrics like impressions and clicks if you want to see real results. Unified reporting and measurement can help create a cohesive omnichannel strategy that speaks directly to individual HCPs and patients, and stands out in a crowded market.
On the patient side, for example, you’ll want to look at things like audience quality—which allows marketers to measure how well their reached audience matches with their intended audience—and RX lift studies, where marketers can use tools like IQVIA or Crossix to measure prescription lift as a result of digital advertising. Then, teams can better assess whether they’re seeing ROI from those campaigns and optimize accordingly.
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Interested in working with experts like Ryan? Connect with us to find out how our media strategy and activation services put pharma marketers on the cutting edge of HCP and patient targeting.
There are certain words that just feel good. For example: “Free.” “Saturday.” “Birthday.” And of course: “Guaranteed.”
There’s not much that’s guaranteed in life, which must be why phrases like “money back guarantee” and “satisfaction guaranteed” are so nice to see as a consumer. In the context of selling goods and services, these slogans—and the promises that come with them—give consumers some extra agency. And in the context of today’s economic upheaval, that agency is particularly meaningful.
But consumers aren’t the only ones impacted by a turbulent economy, and advertisers could use a little extra agency, too. Luckily, there’s a programmatic buying method that offers just that: programmatic guaranteed. Read on to learn what it is, see how it differs from other buying methods, and discover all the ways it can benefit your campaigns.
Programmatic guaranteed is all about automation and assurance. Let's start with the automation part: For a programmatic guaranteed buy, advertisers may get to sync their data management platform (DMP) with the publisher’s DMP in order to access specific publisher audiences that they want to target via device ID or third-party cookie match.
Next, the assurance part (and this is where that glorious “guaranteed” word comes in): In programmatic guaranteed deals, advertisers are guaranteed a certain number of impressions and a fixed CPM up front. No holding your breath to see if your campaign will run over budget or having to explain why it didn’t garner as many impressions as you planned—with programmatic guaranteed, what you see is what you get!
“This all sounds great,” some advertisers might say. “But what does the process of a programmatic guaranteed deal actually look like?” Here’s how it works:
A programmatic guaranteed deal starts with negotiation and agreement between an advertiser and a publisher within a demand-side platform to create a customized deal. At this time, details such as the ad inventory, ad placements, pricing, and targeting are agreed upon (and, as the name suggests, guaranteed!).
The programmatic guaranteed deal is then set up within the DSP to automatically execute based on the agreed-upon terms. As the deal is executed, advertisers can access real-time reporting and analytics to monitor and track performance of their campaign.
Parts of this process might sound similar to other buying methods. Let’s review how programmatic guaranteed differs from direct buying and PMPs:
You could call programmatic guaranteed a perfect marriage between direct and programmatic buying. With programmatic guaranteed, advertisers can access the premium ad placements and guaranteed inventory that come with direct deals, while benefiting from the digitized, automated nature of programmatic.
Direct buys can be somewhat complicated to set up and execute, because they require negotiating and communicating with publishers outside of the platform you use to run media. Programmatic guaranteed puts all those interactions inside the DSP, so advertisers can quickly and easily swap out creative, or even pause campaigns immediately (depending on the publisher with which you’re working).
Like direct buying, private marketplace (PMP) advertising is all about exclusive, premium inventory. However, while PMPs are exclusive in that they can only be accessed by a limited number of advertisers who are invited, programmatic deals are set up directly between the publisher and the advertiser.
PMPs are great for securing prime inventory at pre-negotiated rates, but they don’t ensure a certain number of impressions. Plus, one publisher can have hundreds of PMPs, which further complicates an already dizzyingly complex media landscape for marketers. With programmatic guaranteed, on the other hand, advertisers can secure the exact number of impressions and the exact target audience they want.
Now that we’ve covered what goes into a programmatic guaranteed deal, and how it differs from other buying methods, let’s take a look at what running an effective programmatic guaranteed campaign entails. Though some things will vary depending on your individual campaign and goals, there are a few steps all advertisers should take:
By working through these key stages, advertisers can make the most of their programmatic guaranteed deals and ensure they run smoothly, start to finish.
By this point, you already know about the automation and assurance advantages offered by programmatic guaranteed. But those qualities add up to a number of other benefits that advertisers should be aware of. In order to review those, we’ll call upon some more happy words—like “savings,” “consolidated,” “exclusivity,” and “transparency”—so get ready for a little adtech endorphin boost! Here we go:
As we’ve discussed, programmatic guaranteed automates many of the manual tasks associated with direct buys, including data entry and IO creation. The fact that programmatic guaranteed streamlines these tasks from within a DSP not only reduces errors, but also saves significant amounts of time. In today’s fast-paced advertising landscape, the agility these time savings provide is crucial.
Billing for direct buys can be complicated. Manual IO management and communication between publishers and advertisers take up a lot of time, can be error prone, and are handled separately from other buying methods advertisers use. In contrast, billing for programmatic guaranteed doesn’t require any exchange of agreements or orders between publishers and advertisers. Instead, it can be automated and consolidated within the digital advertising platform—no additional bills required.
Like billing, reporting for programmatic guaranteed buys is automated and consolidated within a DSP. This allows advertisers to look holistically at campaign performance and assess conversion attribution comprehensively. As omnichannel advertising increasingly becomes a must for advertisers wanting to reach consumers in the most opportune moments, it’s a huge benefit to be able to quickly and easily pull holistic reports to assess campaign performance from every angle.
Programmatic guaranteed deals are typically given high priority by publishers, and there are instances in which publishers are setting inventory aside just for these kinds of buys. Want the most exclusive, premium inventory on the market? Then you want programmatic guaranteed.
With programmatic guaranteed deals, advertisers know exactly what they’re getting ahead of time when it comes to spend and impressions. Even better, those numbers don’t change for the entire duration of a campaign. This transparency and predictability make it easier for advertisers to plan their campaigns more effectively, as they don’t have to worry about under-delivery or under-spend. Plus, all the campaign information is contained within the DSP in real time—there's no waiting for publishers to send reports or confirmation.
Let’s recap: Savings. Exclusive. Holistic. Transparent. There sure are a lot of reasons to love programmatic guaranteed!
Realistically, of course, advertisers will need to tap into all the different media buying methods, depending on the situation, to make the most of their marketing spend. And when it comes to premium inventory, PMPs—like programmatic guaranteed—are a great addition to any marketer’s toolkit.
Want to learn more about the best ways to access premium inventory? Check out our private marketplaces page for all the details.
Willkommen, beer lovers! It’s time for Oktoberfest, Munich’s extravaganza of carnival rides, parades, German foods… oh, and did we mention beer?
At the official Oktoberfest, only six Munich-based breweries are allowed to serve beers that, by 500-plus-year-old purity laws, must be composed of just six ingredients: water, barley, hops, yeast, wheat malt, and/or cane sugar. For brewers, the process of crafting a beer that both adheres to these standards and stands out from the competition requires careful planning and attention to detail—sound familiar, digital marketers?
Tradition looms large at Oktoberfest, but at the same time, change is a constant (again: Sound familiar, digital marketers?). While millions of people flock to Munich for that traditional six-ingredient Oktoberfest beer, brewers around the world honor the event by crafting brews that experiment with unique but inspired ingredients. Coriander, sage, grapefruit…pickle? Hey, where there’s a taste bud, there’s a beer.
Digital marketers can learn a lot from these Oktoberfest-inspired brewers: Just like crafting an award-winning beer, crafting a standout digital marketing campaign takes quality “ingredients,” tons of creativity, and a test-and-learn approach. So, let’s lift the lid on how marketers can stand out from the pack with a gold-medal digital advertising campaign.
Knowing that all beer essentially starts with water, malt, hops, and yeast, what makes some beers rise above the rest? A well-defined recipe using premium ingredients like roasted malts that affect color and sweetness profiles, aromatic hops that range from piney to citrusy, imported yeasts, and even high quality water can turn a standard beer into a standout for the discerning drinker, which leads, in turn, to big benefits for brewers.
Similarly, marketers with a well-defined audience can crack open premium inventory through private marketplaces (PMPs) and buying tactics like programmatic guaranteed to advertise where their ideal customers reside online. PMPs offer many benefits, including limited competition, high-quality audiences, and premium, privacy-friendly inventory. Programmatic guaranteed raises those stakes with an added layer of predictability—the chance to lock in the cost and number of impressions upfront—and, thus, streamlined efficiency. These sorts of exclusive, customizable inventory opportunities can increase the relevance of, and customers’ response to, an ad campaign.
Premium ingredients result in premium beers, but brewers often raise the bar by tapping into trends to create new flavors, gain more attention and, better yet, increase share of wallet. For example, beer brands follow seasonal flavor trends, from shandies in the summer to pumpkin spice in the fall. They also monitor consumer health and lifestyle issues, with some brewers developing low-calorie and non-alcoholic beer options to appeal to wider audiences; and broader cultural issues like environmental responsibility, resulting in operational initiatives for breweries to lower their carbon footprints.
Advertisers can also leverage trends to better connect with their audiences. For example, how about this spec ad for Heineken that leveraged this summer’s “Barbie” fever? It went viral because it capitalized so well on the cultural moment the movie created. While some trends bubble up from popular culture, others are specific to certain industries, or stem from consumer behaviors, such as digital audio listenership growing, or time spent watching connected TVs increasing. Changing consumer values also count as trends—even the digital advertising industry is acting on the public’s environmental concerns, for instance.
So to really quench your target audiences’ thirsts, think outside the cooler: hop on cultural trends, consider alternate or emerging media options, and invest in understanding your consumer well enough to surprise and delight them.
What would a frosty stein of beer at Oktoberfest be without the alcohol and carbonation? Well, you can’t have either without an important step in the brewing process called fermentation, when the glucose in the wort turns into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. Fermentation takes place after preparation and brewing, but before bottling or canning, and is the step that takes the longest but is necessary for a brewer to get optimal yield.
Just like the time it takes for a brew to ferment, the first stretch of a digital ad campaign can yield results that lead to subsequent real-time optimizations, such as altering media choices, targeting, and creative. In fact, the earlier a campaign begins—even just a month earlier—the more learnings there are to be gleaned, the further costs can be driven down, and the more efficiently a campaign can run.
Think about a time you went to a new brewery, saw the array of drink options on the menu, and ordered a flight to try a few brews before settling on a pint of your new favorite flavor. You turned lots of information into a data set from which you made an informed (and tasty) decision. Similarly, utilizing automated reporting tools that merge disparate data sources into one unified area can drive better optimization decisions and create more efficiency for your team.
As the festivities of Oktoberfest bring people together in celebration of a centuries-old tradition, and beer often, well, just brings people together, a full-bodied digital marketing campaign can also unite your target audience with your brand. With premium “ingredients,” abundant creativity, and experimentation with intent to improve, advertisers can brew a successful digital advertising campaign that stands out from the pack. Prost!
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The movement towards privacy in digital advertising is as complex as a Belgian sour (if not more so!). For guidance on managing that complexity, check out our guide to privacy-friendly advertising: It’s your one-stop shop for everything advertisers need to know about the cookieless future.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 9/15/23 – 9/21/23 to stay ahead of the curve:
Talks have resumed between ByteDance and the US government regarding federal access to and control over user data. This will likely postpone any possibility of the social platform’s sell-off or nationwide ban—a welcome development for brands who’ve leaned into advertising on TikTok.
Speaking of social, while Snapchat gets less attention than TikTok, the platform’s renewed focus on augmented reality (AR) may open new opportunities for advertisers. Here, learn what marketers should know about Snap’s recent ups and downs, and how to best leverage the channel.
In this op-ed, Columbia Law Professor Constance Wu explores how the verdict of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google’s parent company, Alphabet, will set a precedent for regulating tech competition that will impact "the battle over commercialized artificial intelligence, as well as newer technologies we cannot yet envision.” No big deal!
According to new findings from the FTC, children are struggling more and more to discern advertising from other types of content, particularly on gaming platforms. As a result, there’s a huge push for increased regulation when it comes to child safety on these platforms.
With all the buzz around generative AI, there’s also been significant concern around data and privacy—particularly from companies concerned with protecting their proprietary data. OpenAI’s answer: ChatGPT Enterprise, a tool that allows employers to own and control their business data.
Show off your marketing chops with our question of the week. This week’s hot topic: Higher education.
In what year will higher ed institutions likely see a significant enrollment drop off, caused by a US population shift during the Great Recession?
a) 2025
b) 2026
c) 2027
Get the answer, along with a deep dive into how higher ed marketers can adjust to this changing landscape, right here.
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Connected TV usage is skyrocketing as viewers increasingly turn to CTV to watch all their favorite content. And so it’s no surprise that political marketers are all over CTV: It provides the classic TV viewing experience that campaigns (and voters) love, but with more opportunities for precise targeting, measurement, and engagement than linear TV.
In fact, CTV accounted for 30% of all political programmatic ad spend during the 2022 election cycle—a 63% increase from 2020 and a 600% increase from 2018. And that trend is showing no signs of slowing: The 2024 presidential elections are forecast to see 80% more CTV/streaming ad spend than the 2022 midterms, hitting $1.8 billion.
How can political advertisers embrace this rapid growth and ensure they’re effectively connecting with voters where and when they’re watching video? In this guide, we analyze the latest data, trends, and research to help campaigns and political advertisers uncover everything they need to know about CTV advertising for candidates and causes.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
Ready to make the most of your CTV ad spend? Fill out the form to download your copy of the guide today!
From vibrant billboards in urban centers, to point-of-purchase screens, to digital screens at EV charging stations, digital out-of-home advertising is everywhere.
Also known as DOOH, the channel gives political advertisers a unique opportunity: Connect with voters when they’re on-the-go, in contextually relevant environments, when they may be less reachable on their personal devices. And, thanks to the inherent benefits of digital technology, it lets them do so in a way that allows for targeting, tracking, optimizing, and measuring the success of those campaigns.
DOOH is an emerging channel—and one that’s quickly gaining steam. As such, more and more political advertisers are embracing it as part of their larger omnichannel media strategies to reach target audiences in key moments of impact.
In this guide, crafted specifically for political advertisers, we explore how savvy political marketers can make the most of the DOOH opportunity. We dig into the latest trends, insights, and research to help political advertisers leverage the power of place in their DOOH campaigns.
Ready to level up your digital out-of-home advertising expertise? Fill out the form to download your copy of the guide today!
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 9/8/23 – 9/14/23 to stay ahead of the curve:
With the majority of production at a halt due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes—not to mention all the other drama and tumult coming out of TV land—some advertisers are starting to wonder: Does fall TV even matter this year? And, if not, where is the best place to divert that spend?
In anticipation of next year’s presidential election, Google is upping its generative AI regulation: Come November, political marketers will be required to disclose when ads feature “synthetic” content that “inauthentically depicts real or realistic-looking people or events.”
It feels fairly safe to say that all advertising teams want to maximize their return on ad spend. But knowing how to make adjustments to a target ROAS bidding strategy? That can be tricky. This deep dive details how to make the most of an array of target ROAS adjustment scenarios.
According to a new report, the US ad industry is set to grow by 5% this year. The biggest contributor to that growth? Digital advertising, which is projected to make up 64% of all ad spend in 2023.
We all know the advertising industry is ripe for burnout, but there’s a new conversation growing around loneliness in the workplace, spurred by the surgeon general’s recent advisory on the epidemic of isolation in the US. Here, advertisers share their perspectives on how marketing teams can address loneliness at work.
Show off your marketing chops with our question of the week. This week’s hot topic: Generative AI.
What percentage of digital marketers believe that consumers will find a brand less authentic if it uses AI-generated content in its marketing or advertising efforts?
D. 15%
A. 25%
B. 55%
C. 75%
Get the answer, along with even more insights about the benefits, risks, and future of generative AI in digital marketing, right here.
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Like so many industries, the higher education space has been turned on its head over the past few years. While online learning is no longer the necessity it was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued increase in demand for online education programs is undeniable.
However, COVID-19 wasn’t the only impetus for changes in higher ed. Not only had undergraduate enrollment declined for eight consecutive years pre-pandemic, but colleges and universities must now prepare for an undergraduate enrollment cliff that will begin in 2025.
Luckily, as the higher education space has evolved, so too have the tools available to marketers. For colleges and universities to mitigate enrollment declines and effectively market their virtual and online programs, marketers will need to update their strategies and expand into channels like programmatic, CTV, and emerging social platforms.
Read on to learn how marketers can secure wins for higher ed institutions in this new era.
The decrease in higher education enrollment rates is fueled by multiple factors. In a recent survey, US adults ranked the price of tuition, family responsibilities, and work conflicts as their top three reasons for not enrolling in higher ed. Competition from alternative and online training programs, such as tech bootcamps, is another big factor.
Perhaps even more impactful, however, is the rise in public skepticism over the benefits of higher education. A 2022 poll found that only 49 percent of Americans think the economic benefits of a college education outweigh the costs. And in another survey, nearly half of US parents said they’d prefer their children pursue alternative postsecondary options, even if there were no barriers to getting a bachelor’s degree.
While the trend of enrollment declines in higher ed is a long-term one, the rise of online and virtual offerings has come on fast and furious in the past several years. Investment in education technologies that support virtual and online learning is growing, and innovations from digital education start-ups are putting additional pressure on traditional institutions to up the sophistication and quality of their own online offerings. Put simply, the online education market is rapidly expanding, creating a significant amount of competition for colleges and universities to keep up with and making it all the more important to differentiate themselves with their marketing.
So, how can marketers succeed in this tumultuous time for higher education? In short, by leaning into the changes. Marketing to the virtual world, testing and learning on new platforms, and segmenting and targeting will be key.
Online and virtual learning are quickly becoming the new normal. Just as institutions have pivoted to educating remotely, marketers need to pivot their strategies to reach online learners where they are.
Virtual events are a great way to show key audiences that your higher education brand knows how to do digital. They also open your marketing strategy to international audiences—and what’s better than getting thousands of additional eyes on your offerings?
Open houses, campus visits, and accepted student days can be pivotal in the student decision-making process, and there are plenty of ways to get creative in terms of making them accessible for those who prefer to participate in these experiences online (check out Harvard’s Virtual Tour for inspiration!)
To successfully market a virtual event, experts recommend tapping into co-branding opportunities. If your university is organizing a virtual Q&A with select engineering staff, try leveraging those staff members’ connections. For example, a professor who’s on the board of the Society of Women Engineers might be able to get that group involved with promoting the event.
Historically, the higher education marketing model has leaned on advertising to general audiences on network and cable TV. Yet the audiences colleges and universities want enrolling in their programs—namely, Gen Z—don’t engage with media in the same way as past generations. Instead of tuning into linear TV, Gen Zers are more likely to watch content on a connected TV, play video games, listen to music, browse the internet, and engage with social media. Higher education advertisers would be wise to redirect some of their media budgets toward these channels in order to reach prospective students.
Speaking of social media, let’s talk Meta for a moment. While the platform no longer offers advertisers the option to target users under 18 based on their interests and activities, marketing on Facebook isn’t a bust. Its algorithm is highly effective at targeting people who are likely to take a desired action, even if relying on that algorithm removes a significant amount of marketer oversight.
At the same time, Facebook isn’t what it used to be—it’s seen a steady decline in use for prospective students aged 12 to 17. Even more, Facebook and Instagram are established social platforms that can be oversaturated with advertising.
When leveraging platforms like these, influencer marketing is a smart way to distinguish your brand, as influencers are particularly effective with Gen Zers and millennials. Higher education brands have a unique opportunity to work with micro- and nano-influencers (think students, alumni, and staff) who are typically perceived as more authentic than celebrity influencers, and can help build brand trust as a result.
In addition to refining strategies on established social platforms, marketers should branch out into new channels. Channels like Snapchat and TikTok (two of the most popular social networks with Gen Z), and audio streaming are great ways to reach younger demographics in places where they spend a lot of their free time. Marketers can then utilize CTV (of which 80% of the US population from 25 to 54 are regular users) to connect with older demographics whose kids will soon be thinking about their post-high school plans.
When marketing to the virtual world, there may be no better tool in the advertising toolchest than programmatic.
Programmatic advertising gives media buyers an easy way to tailor messaging across unique audience segments and tactics. By leveraging automated higher education programmatic advertising campaigns, higher education marketers can make sure they are serving the right messages to the right audiences, at the right time, and while they’re in the right frame of mind.
With the ability to put custom messaging in front of audiences with different interests and priorities— “traditional undergraduates” and “prospective transfers,” for example—marketers can use their budgets more efficiently while collecting knowledge about what moves the needle with different consumers. On a more tactical level, marketers can customize their creative to retarget audiences, reach people with unique interest targeting, or even connect with people who are physically close to a school’s campus.
First-party data also presents a big opportunity for higher education advertising. For example, leveraging a DMP solution enables marketers to gather advanced audience insights about visitors to a learning institution’s website. Marketers can then use those insights for look-a-like modeling, further expanding their target segments based on the attributes they find.
While it’s important to collect your own insights about target audiences, general audience research can still help you get a head start. By analyzing data from MRI-Simmons and TeenMark, Basis Technologies’ Research & Insights group has identified five key growth audiences within higher education:
All five of these growth segments are heavy digital media users and spend more hours online than the average US adult. They also generally come from diverse and multicultural households and, as such, tend to prefer advertisements that feature people who they can relate to. Across all audience segments, it’s more important than ever for colleges and universities to feature people of diverse identities and backgrounds in their media.
Despite the upheaval, this is an exciting time for marketers who want to lead higher education brands into the digital-first future and help transform perceptions around what higher education can be.
To demonstrate that leadership with digital campaign success, advertisers should prioritize marketing to the virtual world, testing and learning on new platforms, and the strategic use of segmenting and targeting tools. These three approaches alone will set any higher education marketer up to be valedictorian of their team.
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Higher ed marketers face unique challenges that demand unique solutions. BasisEducation brings all those solutions together to help empower marketers at colleges and universities, with features like:
Connect with us to find out how BasisEducation can help your team.
