OTT Drives Targeted Awareness of College Affordability in
One of the goals of GEAR UP is to increase students’ and families’ knowledge of postsecondary education options, preparation, and financing. Many prospective students and their families were largely unaware of how affordable college is in North Carolina compared to other states. This transmedia campaign was designed to increase awareness about college affordability, especially given the new NC Promise Tuition Plan and the UNC System fixed tuition program. Research found that streaming TV could play a role in reaching economically disadvantaged and rural communities effectively. VisionPoint and SpotX customized a strategy to help thousands of potential students understand affordable college opportunities.
Goals
GEAR UP NC, a federal college access grant program administered by the University of North Carolina System, had a goal to build awareness and understanding of college affordability in the state, especially highlighting two new state-sponsored initiatives: a Fixed Tuition Program and the NC Promise Tuition Plan. The UNC System partnered with VisionPoint Marketing, a higher education marketing agency, to develop an integrated campaign, “Affordable for All,” that would engage first-generation students and their families.
Challenged with raising awareness and understanding of college affordability programs in rural areas, VisionPoint tapped SpotX to incorporate an over-the-top (OTT) and online video (OLV) advertising campaign within their marketing strategy.
Audience-targeted video offered a powerful medium to convey the multiple messages within this campaign in an engaging way to educate and raise awareness. As more and more people leave traditional cable TV contracts behind in favor of streaming services, delivering the video ads through OTT and OLV placements helped reach target audiences — many of whom were not reachable through other traditional channels.
Solutions
SpotX worked with VisionPoint and the UNC System to launch a campaign that reached their specific audiences with precise targeting through OTT and OLV, something that wasn’t possible with broadcast video.
The campaign included geo-targeting at the county level, as well as demographic targeting based on household income, age, and target groups such as parents, students, and educational influencers. With a device-agnostic audience, SpotX helped craft a campaign that allowed cross-device audience targeting across mobile, desktop, smart TVs, streaming devices, and gaming consoles.
While education affordability has been an important issue for decades, the conversation has only grown given the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The awareness and market education achieved through this campaign, which ran from October 2019 to January 2020 prior to the coronavirus outbreak, has been amplified during this economically challenging time as more students look to unenroll from expensive four-year universities and attend more attainable schools that offer flexible learning opportunities.
Results
The campaign performed extremely well across OTT and OLV:
- Delivered 7.4 million impressions
- Achieved an 81.9% video completion rate (VCR)
Overall since its inception, the integrated marketing strategy produced 47 million impressions and over 113,000 clicks across digital and traditional channels, including video, giving the system unprecedented visibility. A follow-up market study showed an 11 point increase in the percentage of parents who understand the value of the new affordable education programs and a 10% increase in parents’ likelihood to encourage kids to pursue in-state institutions.
To learn more about this campaign, or how SpotX can help transform your TV strategy, contact us at usdf@spotx.tv.