With summer almost over just getting started, what better time to talk about the education vertical? While it may not seem like it, many academic and education advertisers are already planning budgets for the upcoming school year and beyond. Thankfully, the Basis research team has done their studying and compiled insights, spend analysis, and more across higher education advertisers for us! You can find the deck here Higher Education VKB (May 2024).pptx and some key takeaways below to help you ace your next pitch!
Key Takeaways:
Industry:
- Education remains a priority among consumers.
- Educational attainment rates continue to rise for high school and college graduates.
- The number of bachelor’s and master’s degrees earned continues to grow year over year.
- Looking at minority populations, more Hispanics and Asians have been earning bachelor’s degrees every year.
- Many current students in bachelor’s programs are also first-generation college students.
Paid Media:
- Programmatic channels are a key part of the media mix for competitors within this market, at least 40% of each educational segment’s focus goes toward these platforms.
- The emphasis on programmatic shows the industry’s recognition and trust in the effectiveness of programmatic advertising and reaching their target audiences, often younger segments.
Audiences:
- Whether students, working adults, or parents are in the market for a reputable academic institution.
- Each segment wants to invest in a school that they can rely on to foster their creative interests with the support of guiding tools/resources and advisors whose frameworks are designed to fit their unique academic needs.
- Giving students the freedom to carve out their academic career path and tools to help guide them along the way is key; marketers should highlight their offerings on this front across their outreach efforts to stand out from their competitors.
Thinking about media planning? Try adding targeting/tactics like these to maximize audience reach:
- Audience: High school graduates, those with high school degrees, affluent families with children, college students, moms with college students
- Contextual: Content relating to college life, college admissions, predictive college-bound, recent college graduates, college life stages
- Hyperlocal: Geo fence high school sports stadiums, conferences, career fairs, and graduation ceremonies.
- Retargeting: Re-engage users who have already shown an interest in the advertiser via their website.
- PMPs: Leverage 1PD directly from publishers using our PMP library to reach children-present segments, minority segments, and parent audiences.
For more information to level up your education selling, check out the Vertical Resource on the Basis Activation Center!