Business schools display ads

Business schools are using mostly display ads for executive education, especially MBAs.
I wanted to check if the top 50 business schools were all using this channel of acquisition of new leads, and how. There are significant differences in the way these schools advertise in Europe, USA and the rest of the world. A few tools are available to estimate how much they spend and where, as well as with which creative. But these tools (Comscore Mymetrix for example) are not free. I used one free tool monitoring only which advertising creative is displayed: Moat.com.

Moat seems to have a strong bias towards advertising displayed on websites visited by americans and does not seem to include Linkedin. Also, the assumption being made here is that if a school uses more creatives than another, it probably means it has an employee or an agency dedicated to display advertising and that if there are a lot of different creatives and formats used, this probably means this business school has a bigger budget. The idea is that there a correlation between the quantity of advertising used and the ranking of these business schools in popular rankings like the one of the Financial Times, as well as with the country where the school operates and in which language.

I plan to continue this analysis by adding more sources of display advertising: Linkedin ads, Facebook ads, retargeting ads. I also want to analyse the content being displayed: colors used, is there are question, one or more calls to action, one or more buttons, just text or photos, pictures of students or professors, which words are being used, does the school talk about its ranking, does the school refers to a applying before a precise date.
I’ll also interview a few members of these business schools in charge of buying and producing these advertising, a few current students of these schools, and a few potential candidates of these schools to know how they feel about these ads.
Another addition could be to analyse the registration funnel once the candidate clicks on the creative, as well as analyse which emails, calls and retargeting that person receives after showing some interest.
In the first version of this study, I start with a ranking by quantity of creatives for France, Europe, the USA and the rest of the world, followed by screenshots of the latest creatives displayed by each school.
First of, a focus on the top french business schools in France:
Only half of the top French business schools use display ads, all active in 2019
1 hyperactive: Insead: 275 ads
2 very active:
– ESCP Europe: 185 ads
– HEC Paris: 176 ads
3 very shy who did not invest much yet on display ads:
– Neoma Business School: 17 ads
– EM Lyon: 12 ads
– Edhec: 4 ads

Absolutely shocked to see these French business schools having no display ads:
ESSEC: no ads
Audencia: no ads
Kedge: no ads
Skema: no ads
Grenoble: no ads
Sciences Po: no ads

Top European Business Schools:
Imperial College Business School: 332 ads
Warwick Business School: 323 ads
Insead: 275 ads
Oxford: 236 ads
Hult: 233 ads
London Business School: 272 ads
ESADE: 187 ads
ESCP Europe: 185 ads
HEC Paris: 176 ads
IESE: 160 ads
University of Cambridge: 139 ads
IMD: 113 ads
IE University: 73 ads
SDA Bocconi School of Management: 67 ads
St Gallen: 20 ads
BI Norwegian Business School: 10 ads
Cranfield School of Management: 6 ads

Top USA Business Schools:
Northwestern Kellogg: 2,222 ads
Boston University Questrom School of Business: 1,597 ads
Chicago Booth School of Business: 1,368 ads
Harvard Business School: 1,204 ads
Wharton University of Pennsylvania: 1,143 ads
Indiana University Kelley School of Business: 1,138 ads
UNC Kenan Flagler: 1,130 ads
Cornell Johnson: 548 ads
Columbia Business School: 545 ads
NYU Stern: 423 ads
MIT Sloan School of Management: 360 ads
Michigan Ross School of Business: 269 ads
Carnegie Mellon University: 252 ads
Yale School of Management: 245 ads
Emory Goizueta Business School: 193 ads
USC Marshall School of Business: 183 ads
Stanford Graduate School of Business: 110 ads
Carlson School of Management: 74 ads
Texas Mccombs School of Business: 55 ads
Babson College: 52 ads
UCLA Anderson: 43 ads
Georgetown University McDonough School of Business: 33 ads