Every school that recruits high school students eventually asks the same question: can we aim our ads at teenagers? On Google, the short answer is no. The useful answer is that a school doesn't need to. Teens search for colleges, trade programs and summer programs themselves, and their parents are one of the audiences Google does let a school reach.
This chapter covers what Google allows and doesn't for anyone under 18, how to reach the parents instead, and the launch settings a school's first campaign needs, starting with three Google defaults that work against it.
Google Bars Personalized Ads for Everyone Under 18. A School's Ad Can Still Appear When a Teen Searches.
Google's rules here are short and firm. Its personalized advertising policy says: "Users under the age of 18 are not eligible for personalized advertising of any kind, including serving based on Predefined Google Audiences." Its ad-serving protections for teens add that on accounts belonging to users under 18, Google doesn't allow ads personalization and restricts sensitive ad categories, and that the rules cover Search campaigns as well as YouTube and Display.
Google's demographic targeting page closes the remaining door: no advertiser may aim a campaign solely at users under 18. The age brackets a school can choose from start at 18-24, followed by older brackets and "Unknown." There is no 13-17 bracket to select.
None of that stops a school's Search ad from appearing on a teen's search. A keyword ad matches the words someone types, not a profile of who they are. A high school junior who types "colleges near me" or "welding school near me" can see the same ad an adult would. Education isn't on Google's list of categories restricted for teens. Google's teen policy page says it may affect reach or performance, and that "there's no action required on your part."
That makes the Search campaign from Chapter 6 the main way a school reaches a teenager directly: the program and "near me" searches, on exact match, with the student's own words as the keyword. It also means the ad has to work for two readers at once, the student and the parent who may be searching the same words in the next room.
Some schools already write for both. A technical college in our example market ran an ad that said registration was "available to adults and high school seniors 18 and older." That one line tells a 16-year-old and a parent who can enroll, before either clicks.
Don't try to get around the rules. It can be tempting to use the "Unknown" age group, interests that skew young or the locations of high schools as a back door to teenagers. One higher-education agency's own guide warns against exactly that: "Do not use 'unknown age' groups, proxy interests, school locations, child-focused placements, or other workarounds to bypass minor protections." A school's reputation with parents is worth more than any audience trick.
A School Can't Target a 16-Year-Old on Google. It Can Target the 16-Year-Old's Parents.
The parent is the other way in, and for most K-12 schools the parent is the buyer anyway. Google's detailed demographics include parental status by the child's age:
- Parents of Preschoolers (4-5 years)
- Parents of Grade-Schoolers (6-12 years)
- Parents of Teens (13-17 years)
These segments are available in Search campaigns as well as Demand Gen and Video. In Search, add them on the "Observation" setting, not "Targeting." Google's help page describes observation as a way to "monitor and set custom bids for criteria without restricting your reach." Targeting would show the ad only to people Google has placed in the segment, and it would cut out the teen searcher, the grandparent and every parent Google hasn't identified.
Match the segment to the school. An early-education center or preschool adds Parents of Preschoolers. A K-8 school adds Parents of Grade-Schoolers, and often Parents of Preschoolers too, for kindergarten. A high school, or a college or summer program recruiting high school students, adds Parents of Teens. Trade schools and online programs mostly enroll adults, who are reachable directly; for them the parent segments matter only for programs that take high school seniors.
On observation, the segment does two jobs. The campaign reports show how parents of teens perform against everyone else on the same searches. And once there's enough data, the school can raise bids for that segment if those parents inquire more often. Chapter 10 covers how audience signals feed the later campaigns, where they guide Google's targeting instead of limiting it.
Parents also search in their own words, which aren't always the school's. One K-12 marketing agency noted that "parents don't search for Nursery School nearly as much as they do preschool," and Chapter 8 covered where to find the words families use. A school writing for parents of teens should use those words in the ad, whether or not the segment is attached.
Google Switches On AI Max in New Search Campaigns. A School Starting on Exact Match Has No Use for It Yet.
Three of Google's defaults work against a school's first month. Two sit in the campaign's main settings, and the third, the location option, gets its own section below.
AI Max. Google's AI Max setup page says the feature comes switched on in every new Search campaign. AI Max matches ads to searches beyond the keywords, can rewrite ad text and can send people to other pages on the site. That's the opposite of what an Isolation campaign is for. The point of month one is to learn exactly which program searches bring inquiries, on exact match, with the school's own ads on the school's own program pages. Switch AI Max off when building the campaign. We leave it for the end of a school's rollout, once Exploration and Performance Max have enrolled families.
Search partners and the Display Network. Google includes its search partner sites in a new Search campaign by default, and the campaign can also show on the Display Network if that option is checked. Google's own help page says to "consider carefully whether including these networks aligns with your campaign goals." For a school's Isolation campaign, uncheck both. The goal is clean data from Google Search, where a family typed a program name, not impressions on sites the school didn't choose.
Ad schedule. This one is fine as Google sets it. A new campaign runs all day, every day, and Google lets you limit it to certain days and hours. At launch, leave it running around the clock: a parent filling out an inquiry form at 11 p.m. is still a real family, and the form waits for admissions in the morning. After a month, read the campaign's day and hour report. If calls matter and nobody answers after hours, that's the time to narrow the schedule for call ads, not before.
Before the campaign goes live, open its settings page and check each of these again: AI Max off, both extra networks unchecked, Presence selected, the radius drawn, and every keyword on exact match (Chapter 6). New campaigns come with defaults, and a school that skips this step usually finds out from the first week's search terms report, after paying for it. Then read that report daily for the first week. If searches from far outside the radius or unrelated to any program appear, one of these settings slipped.
Google's Default Location Setting Reaches Past a School's Area. A Commuter School Needs Families Close Enough to Drive.
Google's location settings offer two choices. "Presence" reaches people in or regularly in the locations you target. "Presence or Interest" also reaches people who have shown interest in those locations from somewhere else. Presence or Interest is Google's default and its recommended option, and its help page backs it with a statistic that includes education: advertisers who switched to Presence or Interest "in the Travel, Real Estate, and Education verticals view +5% more conversions on Search campaigns." That figure pools three industries and comes from Google's internal data for a short stretch in 2022.
For a school that enrolls families who drive their children in every morning, we still choose Presence. A parent in another state reading about Salt Lake City schools may convert on a form, but most of those inquiries can't become students who commute. Presence or Interest fits two kinds of school: boarding schools, and schools that recruit families relocating to the area. Even then, we'd run it as a separate campaign, so its inquiries can be judged on their own.
The wider setting can also pull in clicks no school wants. In an online program's account we managed, ads were drawing clicks from China and Europe, which is why we set online programs to Presence for their home country.
The radius depends on the kind of school:
- Private K-12 and early education. Our default is about 30 miles, wider in rural areas and much tighter in dense cities. We've run ads for schools in Manhattan with a radius of about one mile. Bid higher in the zones closest to campus, because families nearer the school convert more often.
- Colleges and trade schools. The area students actually commute from, set around each campus, with a separate radius for every campus location.
- Online programs. The states the school is authorized to enroll from. The SARA agreement covers 49 states, all but California, and its policy manual says advertising to students alone doesn't create a physical presence in a state. Programs that lead to a license, like nursing or teaching, must disclose whether they meet each state's licensing requirements, so check those before advertising into a state.
Next: Telling Google Which Families Enroll
Chapter 10 covers Performance Max: the pages to exclude first and the audience signals that help it find families like the ones who enrolled. If your ads aren't written yet, Chapter 8 covers writing them in families' own words. All sixteen chapters are listed on the Google Ads for Education guide home. If you'd like a hand with the launch settings, here is how our Google Ads management runs for schools.
