FAQ'S

Tell your brand story at scale to a targeted student audience when they are engaging with content with the most prestigious and trusted media.

The world’s first and only curated marketplace of premium and brand safe media that students trust for their content. Institutions can engage with targeted student audience segments by promoting brands next to hyper targeted content powered by AI that identifies contextual searches and natural language processing.

In other words Higher Education Institutions can target the audience by the content they are consuming rather than generically appearing next to the media. (the example is appearing next to the relevant article in The New York Times, rather than any generic placed spot).

The Marketplace consists of every aspect of content that prospective students engage with; lifestyle, news, sport and entertainment. The Marketplace has open (OMP) and private (PMP) marketplace programmatic deals with the curated media to ensure both highest quality and highest performance.

Everything about Student Marketplace is focused on reaching and engaging the student audience, targeted when they are engaging with relevant content in a curated marketplace.

We blend data and AI to create specific student audience segments.

Undergraduate
Postgraduate
Masters & MBA
Parents

We then segment further depending on the specific need of the campaign by Course/Interest and Location.

If there is a need for a specific (such as an international audience segment), then we would create a bespoke plan through our Student Hut Unico product.

A combination of the unique data from advertising billions of data points and over 1 million prospective student records captured each year.

Augmented by integration of the first party data from the curated media in the marketplace. This data is collected through the various signals triggered by audience behaviour (such as sign ups, log ins and on site search behaviours) and is used to further target to our segments.

The main benefit and why Student Marketplace is so effective is that it is the only way to tell brand stories at scale, across premium publishers to a hyper-targeted audience. Because it is a curated marketplace with pre negotiated private marketplace deals that serves adverts against relevant content to a hyper targeted audience, rather than generically served adverts against any media type to an indiscriminate audience. The main benefits are Quality and Performance.

Quality in terms of:

1. The audience
1. Hyper targeted audience segments of the major student segments (graduate, postgraduate, online, etc) using billions of prospective student data points which we can segment Serving adverts only to relevant content that is being engaged using AI that identifies contextual searches and natural language processing
2. Serving adverts only to relevant content that is being engaged using AI that identifies contextual searches and natural language processing


2. The media
1. 100% Brand safe media. Only media institutions would be proud to appear alongside and media that prospective students trust
2. Zero tolerance to Ad Fraud as the Student Marketplace adheres to the principles based on the Conscious Advertising Network Manifesto Pledge

Standard (or traditional) programmatic indiscriminately serves adverts to media within an open network (for example Google Display) using automated tools. In standard programmatic, the media is bought in realtime, automated auctions based on the bidding price at time of serving and so media selection and audience quality cannot be guaranteed.

Student Marketplace uses the same programmatic tools, expertise and techniques but rather than indiscriminately serving adverts and relying on auctions to determine the media selection, adverts are served within the content that is being consumed to a hyper targeted prospective student audience to a closed and curated marketplace of media in which there are both automated and pre negotiated agreements.

Yes and No.

Yes - Student Marketplace Unico offering enables Higher Education Institutions to work with our experts to select specific media and come up with incredibly creative options for that specific media. This includes television advertising.

No - The focus for Student Marketplace is to engage the student audience segment and the specific content they are consuming rather than the media, we do not preselect media for Student Marketplace. The Marketplace is a curated list of premium media, we select the best content in the media depending on the campaign needs. (In other words, it is better to target the prospective student reading an article on a specialist subject rather than placing the advert generically on the media). We then blend private, pre negotiated deals with media alongside open marketplace deals in our curated eco-sphere to deliver maximum performance based on the tailored brief. All possible because of our extensive private marketplace partnerships.

Yes. There are two instances where standard programmatic advertising is relevant;

1. High Quality Retargeting/Conversion - assigning a proportion of the overall marketing budget (we recommend 10% of total budget) to create a specific, qualified audience segment and targeting and serving adverts programmatically to this qualified audience with relevant messages across brand safe media that audience goes on to engage with
2. Low Quality Prospecting - using standard programmatic for brand messages is relevant when quality and performance are not important.

Whenever there is a need for an HEI to reach and engage a high quality prospective student audience to either promote a course or raise institutional brand awareness.

No. Not on its own. Student Marketplace should be used as part of a multi channel mix approach for audience building. Student Marketplace is best used for generating interest and prospecting for a new, hyper targeted audience. That is why we recommend only 20% of advertising budgets to the marketplace using other channels for brand, direct response and then allocating a budget for retargeting back to the relevant audience that has been engaged.

No. Because Student Marketplace has a hyper targeted audience within a curated media mix, clients do not need to set up conversion tagging. Conversion tags are an essential part of any campaign^* where a clients wants to retarget back to an engaged audience.

^* Obviously this technique is cookie dependent which will evolve in 2024 when cookies are depreciated

In order to correctly attribute the value and impact of an advertising channel against an enrolled student it is essential to correctly track and serve the advert. All Student Marketplace adverts are placed using technology that serves the advert and so can attribute the performance correctly.

In other words, a prospective student who engages with advert in the Marketplace, but then later goes on to search for Google and clicks on an advert. Using ad serving technology, we can attribute the student to the correct touchpoint in the Student Marketplace rather than attributing everything to Google’s impact. Because of the essential nature of correct attribution, we include ad serving as a fundamental part of Student Marketplace.

The Student Marketplace has had an unprecedented positive response from all media partners from the globally recognised brands through to the niche, interest based publications and platforms and is constantly growing. All citing the same reasons - the quality and relevance of higher education brands being shown to their audience.

Media that rely on advertising funding need to ensure that their advertising partners align to their audience needs and values. HEI brands advertising bring more authority and kudos to the media than almost any other type of advertising. Media which relies on standard programmatic have little control over the type of advertising partners that sit alongside their content.

No. Although the Student Marketplace uses best in breed programmatic technology and pioneering AI, at its core is a team of dedicated experts. Each specialising in their field, whether it is identifying and building the partnerships for our curated media marketplace or professional traders who optimise the campaigns to deliver the best results.

No. Because the Marketplace has been created specifically for Higher Education Institutions the price is available for budgets of all sizes and for all campaign types. To know more about minimum spends please reach out to the Strategist or our Programmatic team.

Whenever there is a need for an HEI to reach and engage a high quality prospective student audience to either promote a course or raise institutional brand awareness we recommend apportioning a relevant minority of the marketing budget to reach this targeted audience where they are consuming content. Alongside a creative mix of search, social, broadcast and education specialist media.

Not all media can be purchased programmatically and so cannot be included within the Student Marketplace. Therefore, Net Natives has a dedicated and expert Broadcast team who work with Higher Education Institutions on specific high impact, creative brand campaigns targeting students across this type of Broadcast media.

Net Natives has a separate, curated preferred supplier list of College Course and University listing publications with pre negotiated deals and a separate offering.

These publications are distinct to Student Marketplace as the audience on those Education Specialist media are already committed to their research and the opportunities to tell stories to that committed audience are more limited.

Education Specialist media (such as College Course and University listing sites) are still essential to a Higher Education Institution’s marketing mix and so have their own distinct proposition within Net Natives.

We have a dedicated team for education specialist media. Providing research and media buying services for this committed student prospect segment (the committed segment that are deep into their course and institution research).

Yes. Student Marketplace has been created with an inclusive and diverse framework at its core with up to 15% of all Student MarketPlace media representing or owned by LGBTQ+ and ethnic minority communities.

The Student Marketplace is carbon neutral. Through a partnership with One Tree Planted a tree is planted for every 1000 adverts seen in our MarketPlace - “Our partnership has an incredibly positive global impact for nature and biodiversity.” - Matt Hill One Tree Planted.

No. Because The Student Marketplace is powered by a combination of curated media, proprietary 1st party data and content targeting it has been developed to thrive in a cookie less world. Programmatic retargeting specifically relies on cookie technology to segment and target that audience, but that will transform when cookies are depreciated in 2024/5.

Standard IAB recommended sizes based on their study to determine which ad units contribute to revenue and can be advertised across multiple screen sizes.