In “Where Did All the Ads Go?”, the authors noted that advertising spending by U.S. colleges and universities declined significantly over the past decade, falling from approximately $1.26 billion in 2010 to about $600 million in 2022. Over the same period, the share of institutions advertising dropped from roughly 46 percent to 35 percent.
As investment has declined, many institutions have shifted toward measurable performance channels: paid search, paid social and campaigns designed to generate inquiries and applications. Marketing leaders are increasingly evaluated on metrics like cost per lead and conversion rates — measuring that will only increase as search behavior continues to evolve. What’s more, even as global search trends move toward zero-click experiences, teens report having the lowest click-through rate among audiences and are increasingly turning to other elements of the marketing mix to engage.
At the same time, digital tools have made short-term outcomes easier to track, reinforcing this shift. But in doing so, marketing has increasingly prioritized demand capture over demand creation. The result is a landscape dominated by tactics that convert students already in-market, but do less to influence those earlier in the decision process.
That imbalance matters. And to understand why, it helps to look at how brands grow in other categories.
What Category Dynamics Tell Us About Brand Growth
Research across industries shows that most markets are surprisingly stable over time.
In a study of 639 brands across 28 consumer packaged goods categories — including toothpaste, shampoo, fruit juice, and breakfast cereal — only about 14 percent of brands changed their market share by more than three percentage points over five years. This suggests marketing often works less to dramatically grow share than to maintain a brand’s position and visibility.
At the same time, brands grow primarily by reaching more buyers — not by deepening loyalty or overtargeting a small group. Growth depends on penetration: reaching as many potential buyers as possible. These dynamics are especially important in low-frequency categories, where purchases are infrequent and consideration sets are formed well in advance.
Higher education closely resembles these categories. Students typically make a college decision once or twice in their lives, and many consider several institutions before applying.
The institutions that enter those consideration sets are often those that have maintained the strongest awareness over time. And yet, this task has never been harder. Shrinking demographics, intensifying competition, and shifting student expectations mean that simply holding ground requires more deliberate and sustained effort than it once did.
In other words, being known early and often matters.
How Advertising’s Role Can Evolve
If growth depends on being known and considered before the decision moment, then advertising plays a fundamentally different role than mere lead generation.
Lead generation focuses on students who are already searching and is often evaluated through the lens of cost — shifting how advertising is viewed from an investment to an expense.
But the evidence suggests that growth depends on something different: reaching future buyers before they enter the market. This is why industries with similar buying dynamics invest heavily in advertising.
The implication is not simply to spend more on advertising, but to evaluate it differently — linking it to future enrollment and revenue.
In insurance and banking, consumers purchase infrequently, yet firms maintain consistent brand advertising to ensure they are top of mind when the moment arrives.
The same pattern holds in B2B markets, where roughly 95 percent of buyers are out of market at any given time. Lead-generation campaigns reach only the small group actively searching, while most future buyers remain outside the funnel. When they do enter, they typically consider only a few brands.
For higher education, the implication is clear: If a brand is not already on that shortlist, winning the decision becomes significantly harder — and more expensive.
Making the Business Case: Advertising as an Investment
One of the challenges in making the case for advertising is that its effects are rarely immediate.Its impact accumulates over time, building familiarity and increasing the likelihood that a brand is considered when a decision is eventually made. Because those effects often occur months or years after exposure, they are easy to undervalue.
Evidence from “Profit Ability 2” reinforces this point. Advertising is a consistent driver of growth, but much of its impact occurs beyond the initial campaign period. When these longer-term effects are included, the total return increases substantially.
For higher education, this dynamic is especially important. Students form perceptions long before they submit an inquiry or application, and those early impressions shape which institutions they ultimately consider.
Advertising influences this stage — but its contribution is often invisible in short-term metrics like cost per lead. This creates a challenge: If advertising is judged only by immediate outcomes, it will appear less efficient than lead-generation campaigns. Yet without sustained investment, institutions risk weakening the awareness that drives future enrollment.
The implication is not simply to spend more on advertising, but to evaluate it differently– linking it to future enrollment and revenue. Thus, advertising builds a pipeline of future demand. Its value lies in increasing the number of prospective students who will consider and choose an institution over time, improving both the efficiency and stability of enrollment outcomes. In practice, this means tracking metrics like unaided brand awareness, consideration set inclusion, and inquiry volume not just in the immediate campaign window, but in a window that matches your targeting parameters and buying cycle. Similarly, intermediate metrics like brand search and/or web traffic can provide leading or supporting indicators.
For institutions facing increased competition and demographic pressure, this perspective becomes critical. Without it, growth becomes dependent on a shrinking pool of in-market students — driving up acquisition costs and increasing volatility.
This shift in perspective has three important implications for how advertising should be approached:
- Reach matters more than precision. Growth depends on reaching future students, not just those already in-market. Overly narrow targeting limits the ability to influence the broader pool of prospective applicants.
- Consistency matters more than bursts. In low-frequency categories, awareness is built over time. Always-on or near-continuous investment is more effective than short, campaign-based spikes.
- Time matters more than immediacy. Advertising should be evaluated over longer time horizons, not just immediate response metrics. Its value lies in shaping future consideration and enrollment outcomes—not just short-term leads.
With a nod to Andrew Ehrenberg’s decades of research, his weak theory view of advertising reminds us that growth doesn’t come from changing minds. It’s a nudge. A way to reinforce memory of your brand and increase the likelihood of being chosen. In our category, it’s important that our efforts have both the time and reach to work— building the kind of broad, sustained familiarity that quietly compounds into enrollment growth.
