Colleges Turn to Streaming to Recruit Prospective Students

“History doesn’t happen quietly.”

So began a commercial for Sweet Briar College, a small women’s institution in Virginia, that aired on TV and video streaming services during the 2024–25 admission cycle. The 30-second ad featured shots of students dancing onstage, working in labs and riding horses, as well as a sweeping vista of the campus. It encouraged students to apply, emphasizing that only 225 first-year spots were available.

That rallying call seemed to work; the ad, which was targeted at Virginia households with 16- to 18-year-olds—as well as those with an interest in horses, given the college’s storied equestrian program—preceded a robust recruitment season. After it aired, applications increased 14 percent and deposits rose 22 percent, according to AmbioEdu, the marketing firm behind the campaign.

Chris Smith, vice president of enrollment management at Sweet Briar, said he was inspired to add streaming and television to the college’s recruitment repertoire to enhance brand awareness and meet students and families where they are.

“For years, colleges have relied on traditional recruitment methods such as college fairs, high school visits, direct mail, you name it. These approaches really remain important, but we cannot assume that every student or family we want to connect with is hearing or seeing that message,” he said. “There are talented young women across the country who I feel would thrive at Sweet Briar but may not even know that we exist. [These ads] really provided another way for us to introduce those students and their families to opportunities available here.”

Sweet Briar isn’t the only institution turning to good, old-fashioned commercials as part of their marketing and recruitment campaigns. Jennifer Lonchar, co-founder of AmbioEdu, which specializes in TV and streaming advertisements for higher education, said that an increasing number of institutions are especially turning toward advertising on streaming as a new platform for attracting prospective students.

“Higher ed is always a hundred steps behind, I like to say, the ‘real world’ when it comes to marketing, and it always takes us a lot longer to adopt things,” she said. “Streaming is one of the fastest-growing spaces out there. It’s where a lot of marketers are moving their money. It’s not like it’s anything new; it’s been around for a while, but I think for higher ed, it has been something that has been slower to be adopted.”

Nielsen data shows that streaming is rising in popularity, making up about half of all TV consumption, and YouTube is the most popular streaming site.

Streaming also addresses one of the challenges colleges have faced when running TV commercials: measuring return on investment. AmbioEdu can track viewers who saw their clients’ ads on streaming to tell if they clicked through the ad and, eventually, if they submitted an application and enrolled. Having that data is important to institutions, which often need to prove a commercial can lead to real enrollment increases to justify the cost.

David A. Schweidel, a marketing professor at Emory University, told Inside Higher Ed that colleges might be turning to this type of advertising in part to combat demographic changes and concerns about the value of a degree.

One of the key purposes of advertising, he said, is to build trust and awareness of not only specific brands but also the type of product they offer.

“There are a lot of headwinds that higher ed is facing at the moment, and so I think that’s part of why you’re seeing the increased use of television advertising to get in front of people,” he said.

A college might want to invest in that type of advertising for a number of reasons, Lonchar said. For one, viewers are usually a captive audience; unless they pay for ad-free tiers, they typically must sit through a 30-second ad to continue their programming, in contrast with social media users who can just swipe past. Seeing the ads on well-known and respected platforms like HBO Max or Hulu can also give them some cachet, she said.

“I joke around with people and say it’s weird voodoo magic,” she said. “But really, when you think about it, it’s the power of TV that has existed for as long as TV has been around. We all grew up with commercials.
 We grew up watching things on TV and seeing brands over and over again. And that’s what this is.”

Leaders at Mission, an advertising agency in Baltimore that has run ad campaigns for local colleges and universities, said the main goal of a TV or streaming campaign is often to open the recruitment funnel—to make students aware of an institution they might not have heard of rather than push them to actually apply.

Once a student has seen the commercial, said Suzanne Rothrock, a principal at Mission, they might be retargeted via a social media ad, for example, which will hopefully encourage them to take a next step, like visiting campus.

“If they’re making that initial list of colleges, how can we reach them? How can they get them interested in a particular brand?” said Mike Eger, also a principal at Mission. “Maybe they’ve heard of this particular school, but they haven’t really considered it, but then, you know, they see a brand video and it gets them interested and then they start the search.”

Schweidel noted that marketing research indicates that even as streaming grows in popularity, TV and streaming are more commonly utilized by adults older than the Gen Zers currently entering college, who spend more time on social media apps like TikTok and Instagram. That means it might be better for ads on streaming to appeal to the parents of prospective students rather than the students themselves.

Lonchar said she’s received great feedback from institutions that say her company’s commercials have made a significant difference in application numbers and yield rates.

Such ads are “not a silver bullet,” she noted, but they do give institutions a unique way to interact with prospective students.

“We have never had an opportunity like this where we are essentially alone in the living room with the student and the parents, potentially, or the siblings. And I always tell my clients, ‘Think of it like this. 
If a student gave you 30 seconds and said, sell me on your school, what would you say to them?’” she said.