Back-to-School Retargeting Strategies to Reach Students Across the Web

Students are a valuable demographic for today’s marketers. This is especially true at the college level, where students have a combined spending power of nearly $600 billion. You’re also reaching customers who are still open to forming new brand loyalties, which means one conversion can bring years of purchases.

Reaching those students online brings some challenges, though. Today’s college campuses are filled with distractions, and on top of that, Generation Z has developed a mistrust of traditional advertising. Authenticity wins, but how do you get the word out about your products without overtly promoting them?

The good news is, the right tools can help you get around these roadblocks. Here are some strategies to help you as you’re planning your retargeting campaigns.

How to Retarget Ads for Students: 7 Key Strategies and Best Practices With Realize

Let’s say a student visits your website or clicks on an ad, but never makes a purchase. The next step is typically to retarget that customer with an offer designed to convert, but with students, traditional retargeting strategies don’t always work, and that’s where the following techniques can make a difference.

1. Layer Targeting Signals

One-dimensional targeting isn’t enough for today’s savvy students. The best results come when you layer data signals to reach the right individuals in the right mindset at the best possible time.

“The winning combination is contextual plus behavioral, and demographic plus location,” says Tomer Tunitsky, product manager at Taboola. “Target users reading relevant content, like student finance or specific majors. Layer in age data (18-24) and inferred student-like behaviors. Then add geographic targeting like zip codes near college campuses.”

The key components of this strategy are:

• Contextual targeting: Show ads alongside relevant content (e.g., student budgeting tips).
• Behavioral and demographic filters: Combine declared age ranges with Realize’s inferred student-like behaviors.
• Location targeting: Narrow audiences by U.S. zip code to home in on campus communities.

2. Capture Students Mid-journey on the Open Web

Unlike search or social, the open web gives you a chance to catch users while they’re actively researching related subjects. They might be reading an article, exploring career advice, or looking into loan options when your ad appears alongside the content. If you’re marketing an educational or service- or subscription-based business, you can especially benefit from this approach.

“Our main edge is combining all these signals on the open web,” says Tunitsky. “We capture users in their moment of discovery, when they are actively researching topics.”

Use this approach to:

• Deliver native ads while students explore relevant content.
• Complement social and search strategies with discovery-driven touchpoints.
• Position your message as a useful nudge while they’re researching related topics.

3. Combine Interest and Topic Targeting for Flexibility

While student populations have many things in common, each person is unique. That means each student comes with a separate set of interests. Realize builds in two tools to help with that: Interest Targeting and Topic Targeting.

With Interest Targeting, you get hundreds of prebuilt categories, including:

• Education.
• Teaching.
• Test prep.

“Start broad with Interest categories (like ‘education’),” says Tunitsky. “Then, use performance data to identify specific high-performing themes and create more granular segments with the Topic targeting tool to double down on what works.”

Another option is Topic Targeting. This extremely flexible tool will let you build custom audiences using free-text searches, like “scholarships for engineering students” and “how to pay for college without loans.” “Topic targeting should be run as a separate campaign,” advises Ed Lovelock, digital and product marketing leader at Taboola.

For best results, start with broad, interest-based segments, then monitor performance by theme. Once you have enough information, launch topic-specific campaigns around high-performing interests. This type of layered targeting lets you scale reach, then fine-tune based on what resonates.

4. Optimize With Real-Time Audience Reporting

Real-time reporting can help you move beyond clicks and impressions. You can analyze performance, adjust budgets, and tailor creatives based on what you learn.

“Identify audience segments that are working/not working and adjust bids accordingly,” Lovelock says. “Demographic breakdowns help, too — it may be students or parents buying, and creatives can be tailored accordingly.

Tunitsky agrees. “Our reports show you which audiences drive the best results. Use these insights to shift budget to what’s working and refine your messaging.”

Using audience reporting, you can:

• Evaluate creative performance by age, gender, or location.
• Tailor copy to students or parents, based on how they’re responding.
• Discover high-value audiences using the Audience Explorer tool.

5. Extend Reach Through Multiplatform Tools

Students rarely convert the first time they see an ad. To break through the constant stream of information coming at them, you need to follow up with messaging that incites action.

Realize can help with that. The built-in AI-powered tools can drive mid-funnel traffic, which can then be retargeted through Meta, Google, or even Realize itself. Each of these sites requires separate pixels, but Realize can handle that for you, integrating with both to easily boost your audience-building efforts.

“Realize can deliver traffic (Intent Prospecting) to advertiser websites,” Lovelock says. “If they don’t convert there and then, advertisers can retarget on Meta, Google, or Realize because those pixels will have captured the visit.”

Tunitsky adds that pixels placed through Realize can help:

• Segment users based on on-site actions.
• Exclude users who have already converted.
• Build powerful Predictive Audiences using successful converters.

This helps you avoid wasting spend on users who’ve already taken action, while also letting you focus your budget on those who are still in the decision-making phase. It also helps you guide each student through every step of the funnel without needing to start over every time they switch platforms.

6. Scale Using Predictive Audiences

As your campaign begins capturing data, Realize’s Predictive AI kicks in. With each new data point, it learns more about your audience. Soon, it gains the ability to identify common traits of converters and apply that information to its future targeting efforts. Here’s how Predictive Audiences works:

• Your Meta and/or Google Pixel conversion data is fed to Realize.
• Realize models audiences with similar traits.
• You can then target lookalike users on the open web to scale your results.

These steps increase your chances of engaging students at scale. It can also be combined with other strategies, such as showing testimonials after an initial engagement to build trust.

7. Use Location Targeting to Zero in on Campuses

Targeting by physical location remains one of the most efficient ways to advertise to student populations. Homing in on college campuses will ensure you’re working within large concentrations of students. “We can target by zip code in the U.S., which is perfect for focusing on specific university campuses and student areas,” Tunitsky says.

The best use cases for location targeting are:

• Targeting specific universities or college towns.
• Localizing creatives with city or campus names.
• Promoting in-person activations, pop-up events, or seasonal student offers.

Realize’s granular location capabilities can be combined with interest and behavioral targeting to create more precise student campaigns. With location targeting, you can ensure your message arrives in front of students where they live, study, and spend time. Interest and behavioral targeting delivers your content specifically to the students who are most likely to engage and convert.

Key Takeaways

Successfully targeting today’s students is all about layering. Combining contextual, behavioral, demographic, and location-based data allows you to reach students when and where they’re likely to be most receptive. Realize’s Interest Targeting lets you start broad, then refine based on performance using Topic Targeting. The audience reporting tool helps you easily identify what’s working and further refine your efforts. Once you’ve gathered enough conversion data, you can use Predictive Audiences to find new audiences who behave like your best leads, then layer in zip code-based targeting to localize your messaging and maximize relevance for student communities.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who is the target audience for retargeting ads?

Retargeting is for people who have previously interacted with your brand. Someone might have clicked on an ad or social media post, visited your website, or otherwise shown an interest in your offerings, then moved on. With retargeting, you can deliver additional content to those users with the goal of driving conversions.

Where should you advertise to students?

As with any demographic, you should advertise to students where they typically hang out. That includes social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube, but you can also gain traction by targeting their favorite place for research — the open web. Ads can be delivered to students while they’re reading about college life, preparing for tests, and researching upcoming events.

How much does it cost to retarget ads?

Retargeting costs between $0.25 to $0.60 per click on average, which is a fraction of what you’d spend on a search ad geared toward prospecting. Best of all, since retargeting focuses on users who’ve already interacted with your brand, they’re more likely to get results, boosting your return on ad spend.

What is a good CTR for retargeting ads?

The average click-through rate (CTR) for retargeting ads is 0.7%, compared to the average CTR for display ads, which is 0.07%. If you’re targeting college student audiences, keep in mind that CTRs are typically higher, particularly when it comes to email campaigns. If you’re seeing disappointing CTRs, make sure your creatives align with their specific phase of the decision-making journey.