If you’re a university enrollment professional or in-house marketing leader, “bringing in a class” is only part of the job. The unwritten expectation? Stay ahead of every platform shift, every algorithm update, and every new student behavior — at all times.
No pressure, right?
Between shifting student behaviors, new platforms, and AI touching nearly everything, digital marketing can feel like a moving target; one that never slows down long enough for anyone to catch up. The result? Tactics that worked a year ago may no longer have the same impact, even with consistent spend.
With that in mind, here’s a closer look at several of the near-term changes that the Spark451 digital marketing team expects will impact the paid and social digital marketing arena. Along the way, we’ll also share some ideas on how enrollment teams can adapt their media strategies to stay efficient, visible, and competitive in the year ahead.
The Zero-Click Reality — and the Rise of Generative AI Search
Here’s something that might sound familiar: Your paid search impressions look great. Your keywords are working. But clicks? Softer than last year at this time. Leads? Not keeping up year-over-year. Welcome to the zero-click era.
Paid search is undergoing its biggest transformation in years — the biggest one I’ve seen in nearly nine years of focusing on digital marketing at Spark451. With Google’s AI Overviews (and similar features on Bing) now serving AI-generated answers directly above both paid and organic search results, many users are getting what they need without ever having to visit a landing page or website. Sure, some users will still scroll past the AI Overview and read through the ads, but those looking for a quick answer will get that in the overview section. In fact, one recent study showed that 60% of searches end up without a click, meaning the majority of queries end right there on the results page.
We’re seeing it firsthand with our college and university partners: click-through-rates (CTRs) are declining even as impression volume holds steady (it actually increased year-over-year). In some cases, lead counts are even dipping YOY despite consistent spend.
However, even though AI overviews have quickly changed the nature of paid search, you absolutely should not count out Google Search as a robust tool to fill your funnel. Even though CTRs have decreased in many of our campaigns, we’ve been seeing a positive trend of increased conversion rates among those who do make it to the ad’s landing page. That signals to us that the most intentional student searchers are still interested in the information past the AI Overview, and will still visit your page. But, still, we need to be cognizant of the varying needs of each potential student.
The new SEO in town: “Search Everywhere Optimization”
Here’s the reality of our industry and of students’ behavior: Prospective students don’t begin or end their search with a single query. Their journey unfolds over months and years, shaped by countless touchpoints — search results, sponsored posts, organic videos, etc. — each influencing how they evaluate institutions. Search no longer lives in one place. Students are discovering information through TikTok (which now functions as the top Gen-Z search engine anyway!), YouTube, Reddit, ChatGPT, and of course Google — often long before they ever visit your website. In fact, according to Google’s own published data, 40% of Gen-Z uses TikTok or Instagram search features over Google — and that’s including college research.
Students crave authenticity and they’re turning to user-generated content on social platforms to find it. They want to see what the dorms really look like, what the cafeteria serves, and if they can imagine themselves at your campus using TikTok or Reels to get a feel for the college “through other student’s eyes.” They are searching for “day in the life at [College]” on TikTok, “is [major] worth it” on Reddit, or “best college for [interest]” on YouTube during their discovery and search phase, all before doing a branded search for the college in question. But, being discoverable across platforms will allow your institution to not only show up when these searches happen, it will also guide students toward a deeper level of intent — ultimately prompting them to Google your institution’s name and land on your website ready to explore further.
This means you’ll need to:
- Maintain a presence across platforms, with both organic posts and paid ads — not rely on a single channel or budget.
- Treat video and social media assets as “search” assets, by optimizing captions, titles, and descriptions with search intent in mind across all platforms
- Ensure your institution shows up where students ask questions, whether that’s TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, or an AI chat interface like ChatGPT.
But how do you make that last part happen? That’s where answer engine optimization comes in.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — How to Appear in AI Search Results
As students increasingly turn to AI tools to research schools, they’re not clicking through results, but rather, they’re reading AI-generated responses that synthesize information from across the web. The issue today isn’t whether your institution appears in traditional search results as much as whether you appear in the ChatGPT answer.
Here’s what this looks like: A prospective student asks a chat AI, “What are the best engineering programs in the Southeast?” An AI tool generates a response, citing around five schools with specific details about location, program, costs, outcomes, and strengths. If your institution’s website isn’t structured to be cited, you’re left out, even if your program is exactly what the student is looking for.
Structuring your website for AI tools to crawl and scan your content — making it clear and easy to parse through — is the golden ticket to AI search results. You’ll need to use a schema markup to help AI sift through your content and make it searchable, so that students see your institution when searching AI tools. The institutions that win at this will be the ones that make the shift to incorporate AEO strategies sooner than later.
Reddit is the New Search Engine (no, really!)
On a somewhat related note, it’s also worth giving a bit more attention to how your institution approaches Reddit. The user-curated social news and discussion platform has quietly become one of the most influential research platforms for younger generations, including Gen Z and millennials. According to Reddit’s own data, the platform saw a 47% increase in search driven traffic in 2024, and another 19% jump in 2025. Plus, Google now prioritizes Reddit threads in search results for question-based queries. In a 2024 letter to his investors, CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, noted that “Reddit was the 6th-most Googled word in the U.S.” in 2024.
What makes Reddit so powerful is its authenticity. Prospective students aren’t looking for polished content, but rather the unfiltered truth from other students who’ve actually been there. Reddit is filled with threads talking about campus culture, job outcomes, life on and off campus — everything a typical student would want to know about but that might not be covered on a campus tour.
For higher ed marketers, this creates both an opportunity and a responsibility. Thoughtful paid strategies on Reddit allow you to show up in context, aligned with real student questions, without feeling intrusive. But the key is authenticity. You can’t fake your way into a Reddit thread, but you can blend in with the right content strategy.
Ads in AI Chatbots: The Next Frontier of Visibility for Your Institution
This one’s still early, but worth noting and keeping an eye on this year! As more students turn to AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to research schools, ask questions about majors, and compare costs, platforms are beginning to explore how advertising fits into these conversational experiences. In late 2025, Google announced that AI Summaries would soon have ads (a number of our partner institutions are already participating in beta testing for this). Similarly in December 2025, Meta started using personal conversation information from users utilizing Meta’s AI chat to start serving highly targeted ads based on the content of those conversations.
In mid-January, OpenAI announced that it will start serving ads in the free version of ChatGPT for adult users who are logged in. Those ads will be labeled “Sponsored,” and located beneath the answers provided by ChatGPT. As with any platform that is new to running ads, they will be in beta for some time, and will be out of reach to the budget conscious marketers, but we can count on seeing this space open up later this year.
As AI chatbots become a core part of the student search journey, they will eventually introduce a new channel to capture student interest and intent. While still in early development, we expect these tools to create opportunities for institutions to serve ads within AI chatbot searches as these offerings over the coming months — making this a space college and university enrollment and marketing professionals can’t afford to ignore in 2026.
Looking Ahead
Overall, one thing is clear: AI is here to stay, and will become more and more centered within the digital marketing landscape for years to come. And while higher education has typically been slow to adopt digital shifts, this one cannot be ignored. Too much of the student journey — and too much intent — is already being shaped by AI-powered tools.
The landscape is undeniably more complex than it was even a year ago, demographic cliffs and financial woes included. But you don’t need to tackle everything at once. Focused, intentional strategic changes can go a long way toward making an impact — whether that’s testing Reddit for the first time during spring sophomore and junior visit season, or perhaps rethinking how you measure success beyond clicks.
If you’d like to talk through your specific enrollment goals, media mix, or where it makes sense to start testing new platforms in 2026, our team of digital media experts would love to collaborate. Let’s figure out what trends are musts for your institution this year, together.