Education is one of the world’s most competitive sectors, with institutions investing up to billions of dollars in attracting students. Faced with rigorous growth targets and a shrinking pool of potential students, education marketers are spending a staggering US$2000 per student in customer acquisition cost (CAC) – one of the highest in the world. And now, unsurprisingly, the sector’s digital advertising investments have become a huge target for advertising fraudsters.
Since the very beginnings of digital ad buying, brands have been beset by scores of bots and fake traffic that syphon marketing dollars from online campaigns. As one of the industry’s endemic – and costly problems, advertising fraud is expected to cost around US$100 billion in 2023.
Today, it’s estimated that 20 per cent of ad transactions come from fraudulent sources. As such, education marketers find themselves in an increasingly Sisyphean position. Generating growth requires investment; but the more advertisers invest in digital campaigns, the more fraudsters strike.
Lifetime value
Today, universities operate as multimillion-pound businesses with huge international footprints, complex operations and rigorous growth targets.
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Unfortunately, however, student enrollment numbers are dwindling, both in the Northern Hemisphere and across Asia. Added to declining enrollment numbers is heightened competition between institutions for a shrinking pool of candidates.
Thus, for student acquisition teams to meet their significant enrollment targets, a hefty paid media budget is required, which needs to work overtime.
In education and ed-tech marketing, common keywords such as ‘MBA programs’, ‘Business Schools’ and ‘Online MFA’ flood the search engines, costing an average of US$50 per click. Such a high cost-per-click (CPC) is understandable given that the lifetime value of a single student can be in the tens of thousands.
University marketers and recruiters naturally expect their investment to be well-recouped over the course of a student’s attendance. However, that return is increasingly under threat due to ad fraud.
No real value
Keywords related to education have a significant attraction to returning users or students who are searching for specific educational tools or portals using the institution’s name. These clicks can eat up a considerable portion of the ad budget, leaving limited resources to reach out to new prospective students.
This situation can be challenging in the highly competitive higher education sector, where success metrics can become skewed due to the false sense of engagement caused by a flood of clicks from returning users or students. Such invalid traffic offers no real value to the advertiser, limiting their reach to potential new candidates.
Education marketing is a long-term game and one in which fraudsters have learned to cheat. Students spend up to years researching and choosing an education option, meaning marketers need to work with a long sales cycle and multiple digital touchpoints.
To stay level, marketers will often turn to pay-per-click retargeting campaigns that enable their institutions to reconnect with learners who revisit their websites to research and inquire. However, unfortunately, fraudulent activity can quickly deplete retargeting budgets, meaning up to 30 per cent of an ad budget may end up retargeting bots instead of actual students.
Education institutions are not the only brands at risk. From content delivery to remote tuition platforms and exam software, there are thousands of apps in the education sector vying for downloads from students and teachers. Marketers for these apps are also throwing money at driving application downloads, which in turn are targets for ad fraud.
Also Read: How hybrid learning is revolutionising the landscape of education
Large volumes of invalid traffic can lure marketers into directing their spending towards traffic sources that may seem promising but are in fact non-opportunities. Ultimately, this can result in wasted time, effort, and budget on sources that will yield no ROI. Fraudsters not only drain education establishments and app developers of their advertising dollars but also their high-pressured resources.
Tools, trust and transparency
Marketers have so far been slow to react to ad fraud threats. In part, this stems from poor awareness, but it is also due to Google and Apple’s impending changes to cross-site tracking. As these tracking tools face obsoletion, marketers may see little point in investing in the current tech available.
As such, many are still to adopt third-party tools or are monitoring campaigns and metrics, plus implementing correct internal procedures. However, these measures can make a significant difference. Indeed, advanced artificial intelligence tools saved as much as US$10 billion from being diverted to fraudsters last year.
However, technology and tools alone cannot completely solve the problem of ad fraud. Instead, education marketers need to be fully aware of the digital advertising supply chain – and that requires more trust and transparency.
Ignoring ad fraud and hoping it simply goes away is also not an option. If left undetected, marketers stand to lose millions of dollars without even realising it. To succeed in a competitive industry like education, marketers must take immediate action and implement effective measures against ad fraud. Otherwise, it will be a hard lesson for them to learn.
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This article was first published on May 8, 2023
The post Why the education sector needs a lesson in ad fraud appeared first on e27.