The value of display advertising for higher education
June 11, 2025
Capturing prospective students’ attention is important to successful college and university advertising. One successful strategy is with display advertising on websites and mobile apps, using content, images and videos to promote your school. And the ultimate goal is to encourage specific actions from your prospects, such as clicking on a landing page or completing an application.
The value of display advertising
With an extensive reach, display ads create strong engagement and elevate brand recognition for your school. Combining display ads with search engine marketing, pay-per-click, email and social media gives you a comprehensive approach that maximizes impact and drives results.
Types of display ads
Display advertising is versatile, offering multiple advertising formats to reach prospective students:
Static ads: Stationary ads containing text and images are easy to create and load quickly.
Interstitial ads: Full-screen ads covering an entire website or app page to gain a browser’s attention.
Animated ads: Use motion to grab attention and convey more complex messages with storytelling.
Video ads: Engage prospects with motion and sound on websites, social media feeds or pop-ups.
Rich media ads: Interactive ads with video, audio or clickable elements that expand or reveal more content when clicked or hovered over.
Native display ads: Feel less like ads as they relate to the native content being viewed.
Pop-up ads: Appear as static or interactive small windows over a website’s content.
Understand the pros and cons
Let’s dig into the pros and cons of display advertising to create effective, user-friendly advertising strategies.
Pros
Large audience: Display ads reach a broad and diverse audience for extensive brand exposure.
Creative flexibility: With visuals, graphics and multimedia, display ads authentically showcase your school and leave a lasting impression.
Precise targeting: Tailor your ads based on demographics, interests and behaviors. Remarket ads to prospective students who have previously interacted with your website or social media.
Cost-effective: Display ads often have a lower cost per impression compared to other advertising channels, allowing for efficient use of your budget.
Cons
Lower conversions: While effective for brand awareness and initial interest, display ads may have lower direct conversion rates. However, the lower cost per click makes them a valuable option.
Ad blockers: There are software programs or browser extensions that prevent advertisements from being displayed on web pages. To help negate this, find a balance between your advertising content and audience preferences.
Banner blindness: Online ads may see lower engagement and effectiveness due to the number of ads students see each day. You offset this with eye-catching visuals that capture attention.
Steps to get started
Follow this series of strategic steps to reach prospective students and achieve your advertising objectives.
Set clear advertising goals: Define whether you want to do something like increase awareness, drive website traffic or grow enrollment.
Set a budget: Determine your budget based on your goals, your audience and the network and platforms you’ll use.
Partner with an experienced team: Tackling strategy, ad design and campaign management can be overwhelming. Partner with us for access to an expert team, ensuring successful campaign performance and allowing you to focus on campus visit planning or other school needs.
Understand your target audience: Conduct market research to identify your prospective students’ demographics, interests and behaviors.
Know your competitors: By analyzing competitors’ ad placements, designs and messaging, you learn valuable insights to refine your advertising strategy, stay ahead of higher education trends and better resonate with your prospects.
Choose the right network or platform: Select a social media network or search engine platform that aligns with your advertising goals, audience and budget.
Determine placement: Decide where your ads should appear, considering websites, apps and retargeting options.
Design compelling ads: Create visually appealing ads with high-quality images, compelling copy and clear calls-to-action.
Set up tracking and measurement: Use UTM parameters, conversion tracking codes and pixel tracking to measure performance.
Test and optimize: Experiment with different ad variations and refine your targeting based on what works best.
Placing display ads across websites and mobile apps will drive prospective students into action. By combining with other strategies, colleges and universities maximize real results and growth. Your display advertising is about reaching your prospective students and parents, creating meaningful interactions and paving the way for strong enrollment growth.
Glossary
Calls to action: Prompts that encourage specific action.
Conversion rates: The percentage of visitors who complete an action on a website.
Conversion tracking codes: Tags or scripts added to a website to track and measure effectiveness.
Cost per click: The amount paid for each click on a pay-per-click advertisement.
Cost per impression: The cost of 1,000 ad impressions in online advertising.
Pixel tracking codes: Small, often transparent, images used on web pages to track consumer behavior and collect data for marketing analysis.
Urchin Tracking Module (UTM): A code added to a URL to track the success of an advertising campaign.
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