Knauss Digital Ads Campaign

During the Fall 2025 semester at the University of San Diego, I took Digital Marketing with Dr. Rapp. This course brought together everything I hoped to learn throughout my marketing education—from paid search and SEO to website building, brand personas, and email marketing. Most impactful, however, was the opportunity to launch a real digital paid advertising campaign from scratch.
At the beginning of the semester, we were assigned teams and paired with a school within the University of San Diego. My team worked with the Knauss School of Business, where we met with stakeholders to understand their expectations and goals for the campaign. With a clear objective in mind, my teammates Ava, Chase, Maha, Kaylie, and I began developing and executing our strategy.
With guidance from Dr. Farrell, we ran three rounds of paid search campaigns using a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords, along with varied ad copy and headers. After each round, we analyzed performance to understand what worked, what didn’t, and why—using those insights to improve impressions, clicks, and overall return on investment. Across all three rounds, the campaign generated 3.4K clicks, 58.4K impressions, an average cost per click of $0.42, a 5.93% click-through rate, and a total campaign cost of $1,442.97.
Through our analysis, we concluded that broader targeting reduced competition and increased ad efficiency, while emphasizing the university’s desired positioning—career readiness and global opportunities—drove stronger engagement. Targeting users searching for nearby universities such as SDSU or UCSD proved ineffective, whereas campaigns focused on international business and language-related interests performed especially well, increasing traffic while lowering cost per acquisition.
We concluded the project with a final pitch and presentation to the Knauss School of Business, engaging in thoughtful discussion and responding to client questions. This project was one of the most insightful experiences of my academic career and left me feeling both more prepared and genuinely excited for what lies ahead in my professional journey.