Back-to-School Ad Headlines: Realize Data-Driven Insights for 2025

Heading into the 2025 back-to-school season, advertisers need to know what’s driving shopper engagement if they want to build effective ad strategies. To help, we’ve conducted an in-depth analysis of our 2024 data to assess last year’s back-to-school ad headline performance. From product-focused headlines to celebrity endorsements, our insights can provide you with a roadmap to maximize your impact. Let’s start by breaking down the most effective headline categories and what they tell us about back-to-school shoppers.

Headline Categorization: Understanding What Drives Engagement

To better understand the types of content that appeal to back-to-school shoppers, we carefully categorized headlines based on their thematic content. This allowed us to compare different advertising strategies and assess their performance. Here’s a closer look at the headline categories we used:

Product/Promotional

Product or promotional headlines are straightforward, with a clear focus on advertising products, sales, discounts, or specific brands. They often highlight the discount or the product’s unique selling points. The intent behind these headlines is clear: to drive sales by clearly showing consumers what’s being offered and how much they can save.

Solution/Benefit-Oriented

Solution or benefit-oriented headlines address the common challenges that parents, students, and teachers face during the back-to-school season, and offer solutions that make their lives easier. Focus on the product’s benefits and value, such as saving time, reducing stress, or offering convenience. Examples include “Send your kids back to school with the right protection!” and “Here’s a practical guide to not breaking the bank.”

Lifestyle/Fashion/Outfits

The lifestyle/fashion/outfits category features headlines that focus on style, appearance, and lifestyle. They are designed to appeal to shoppers who are concerned with the social aspects of the back-to-school season. They often highlight clothing, accessories, or personal items that can make a student feel confident or trendy.

Informational/News/Event

Informational headlines place a focus on sharing valuable news or information related to back to school. They will often report on events, human-interest stories, or safety concerns regarding the return to school. These headlines aren’t always aimed at selling a product, but rather at providing advice or updates. Examples might include “How to Protect Your Child From Back-to-School Germs,” or “2025 Back-to-School Trends You Need to Know About.”

Emotional/Relational

Emotional or relational headlines evoke feelings associated with the nostalgia and excitement of returning to school. They are designed to resonate with parents who want their children to have the best possible experience, as well as with students who are looking forward to a successful and enjoyable year ahead. Headline examples include “Make Your Child’s First Day Special With These Back-to-School Gifts,” or “Support Your Teen’s Success This School Year With These Essential Tools.”

Generic/Call to Action

Generic headlines are often straightforward and use a simple call to action. The goal is to trigger an immediate action, like a click or purchase, from the consumer. Instead of aiming to educate or highlight a product’s benefits, the marketer is trying to create a sense of urgency. Examples include “Back-to-School Essentials!” and “Don’t Miss Out on These Back-to-School Savings!”

What Kind of Message Are Back-to-School Shoppers Engaging With in 2024-2025?

The table below breaks down the clicks distribution based on the headline categories we analyzed during the 2024-2025 back-to-school season. As the data shows, shoppers were highly engaged with certain types of headlines, and less so with others.

Note: The following percentages in this table are illustrative, reflecting the relative click trends observed across the dataset’s diverse headlines and their categorized examples.

As you can see, shoppers have a clear preference for headlines that address product value or offer practical solutions. This perhaps isn’t surprising, as back-to-school shoppers are looking for competitive prices and ways to make their lives easier during what can be a stressful time.

Patterns in Headline Effectiveness

Value and Clear Propositions Drive Engagement

Headlines that mention a product, savings, or make a clear value proposition perform consistently well. This indicates that shoppers are drawn to offers that promise significant value or substantial savings.

Solution-Based Headlines Resonate

As evidenced by a 24.12% click ratio, shoppers also respond to solution-based back-to-school headlines. According to Esther Altomare, head of industry enterprise advertising at Taboola, “During high-stakes, time-sensitive seasons like back-to-school, shoppers are under pressure to make decisions quickly. Headlines that are clear, urgent, and relevant instantly communicate to busy shoppers: ‘This solves your problem now.’”

Take the following headline, for example: “Here’s a practical guide to not breaking the bank this back-to-school season.” This appeals to parents who want to do more than just spend money and shop — they’re looking for ways to prepare for and manage the school year.

Interactive Content Performs Well

Interactive or engagement-driven headlines, such as quizzes and shopping guides, generated high clicks in 2024. Clearly, content that invites participation taps into consumers’ curiosity and their desire for more personalized experiences.

Celebrity Endorsements Grab Consumer Attention

Advertisements that feature a celebrity endorsement saw a significant increase in clicks. When a celebrity or well-known public figure endorses a product or service, it creates immediate credibility that is difficult to achieve through other means. Celebrities also have large, loyal followings, so they bring their own built-in audience.

Generic and Informational Headlines Don’t Perform as Well

In our analysis, broad headlines that focused on general news, entertainment, or educational topics underperformed, with a click ratio below 10%. It’s clear that shoppers are more interested in finding solutions to their immediate needs through things like product discounts and lifestyle improvements.

Back-to-School Keyword Trends

Brand and Celebrity Associations

When headlines include keywords of specific brand names and associated celebrities, they generate incredibly high engagement. Established brands working with public figures are able to move from generic product curiosity to specific, high-intent engagement.

Financial Keywords

Our analysis revealed that keywords directly tied to financial benefits, like “Savings,” “Offers,” “Deals,” or “Loans,” consistently drive high engagement. This shows that consumers are highly focused on value during the back-to-school season. This was also true when we compared headlines that emphasized “Savings” or “Loans” and those with more generic terms, such as “Essentials” or “Gear.” In other words, advertisers who directly address consumers’ financial concerns are well-positioned to capture their attention.

Practical Solutions

In 2024, keywords that offered practical solutions were highly effective. This can include terms like “protection,” “healthy,” and “simplified,” and it shows that shoppers want real-world solutions that can make navigating going back to school easier. As Altomare explains, it’s all about cognitive ease: “Simple, benefit-focused headlines reduce mental effort. Busy parents/students gravitate to clear solutions.”

For 2025, highly-engaging keywords like “lunch box ideas,” and “sweet and savory lunchbox snacks,” are driving traffic. This reinforces our 2024 findings that consumers respond to content that offers clear, actionable solutions.

Strategic Advertising Recommendations

Based on our findings on headline effectiveness and keyword trends, here are some ways you can optimize your back-to-school advertising campaigns:

Prioritize Value-Driven and Solution-Oriented Headlines

Make sure that your back-to-school headlines focus on financial benefits by promoting discounts, savings, and actionable tips that address the challenges of the back-to-school season. This can include topics such as health, organization, meal prep, and anxiety management.

Leverage Brand and Celebrity Associations

If possible, leverage your brand through partnerships with relevant celebrities and influencers. Effective endorsements can help you cut through the noise and quickly grab consumers’ attention.

Embrace Interactive and Utility-Driven Content Formats

Shoppers love content that engages them beyond a basic product listing. Experiment by incorporating quizzes, surveys, or actionable tips, which makes your advertisement more of a helpful resource than a sales pitch. This approach can build trust and boost client engagement.

Invest in Multilingual and Localized Campaigns

As you build your back-to-school ad campaign, consider using non-English headlines for specific linguistic and cultural markets. Our data shows that Spanish, German, Thai, and Greek headlines resonate well with their respective audiences. Ignoring non-English headlines could result in you missing out on significant market potential.

Key Takeaways

This analysis of 2024 back-to-school ad headlines reveals some key insights. For starters, shoppers are much more engaged with headlines that highlight value and practical solutions. They’re also interested in products that offer financial incentives, such as discounts and special offers. Altomare sums it up nicely, stating that, “solution-oriented creative goes a long way, so focus on lists, urgency, and solutions.”