Back-to-school season remains one of the biggest retail moments of the year—and 2025 is expected to follow suit. Total spending is projected to reach $84.51 billion, with K–12 shoppers alone contributing nearly $50 billion—59% of the total. E-commerce will also play a major role, accounting for 37.4% of total back-to-school sales.
However, 2025 shoppers may be facing even higher costs due to the incoming tariffs with everything from laptops and lunchboxes to kids’ clothing and crayons becoming more expensive. In anticipation of these rising prices, shoppers might once again start early to score deals. Last year, 55% of back-to-school and college shoppers had already started buying items in July for the upcoming school year. This early start coincided with major July promotions like Amazon Prime Day, in which U.S. shoppers spent a record $14.2 billion online, where school-related purchases surged by over 200%.
Whether you’re marketing school essentials or offering services to help students succeed, it’s easy to default to the same go-to audiences. This blog post highlights overlooked back-to-school segments to help you build personalized back-to-school strategies that resonate with students, parents, and educators. You can find the complete audience segment names in the appendix.
School the competition: How Experian can help you connect with 2025 shoppers
With summer just around the corner, back-to-school might not be top of mind, but there’s no better time to start planning. Whether you’re reaching parents, students, or educators, Experian’s syndicated audiences can help ensure your marketing messages make the honor roll by landing with the right people at the right time.
- Experian’s 2,400+ syndicated audiences are available directly on over 30 leading television, social, programmatic advertising platforms, and directly within Audigent for activation within private marketplaces (PMPs).
- Reach consumers based on who they are, where they live, and their household makeup. Experian ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset for key back-to-school attributes such as Presence of Children.
- Access to unique audiences through Experian’s Partner Audiences available on Experian’s data marketplace, within Audigent for activation in PMPs, and directly on platforms like DirectTV, Dish, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk.
Meet your overlooked back-to-school audiences
Back-to-school shoppers aren’t one-size-fits-all. From parents prepping supply lists to students outfitting dorms, reaching the right audience is key to making the grade with your campaign.
Let’s go beyond the basics. Here are four back-to-school audience categories you can target with Experian:
- New year, new gear-ers
- Weeknight TV watchers
- Parenting personas
- School-season meal planners
Let’s open our notebooks and break down the audience segments within each group. Whether your customers are buying backpacks, stocking the fridge, or searching for school essentials, these insights will help your campaign pass with flying colors.
New year, new gear-er
From teens picking out their first-day outfit to college students stocking up for dorm life, these audiences represent a wide range of priorities, needs, and spending behaviors. They’re also heavily influenced by trends, technology, and value-driven purchases.
Don’t overlook these five high-potential audiences in your strategy:
- Big-Box Electronics Stores: High Spenders
- Amazon Frequent Spenders
- Department Store Deal Shoppers In Store Spenders
- Teen Apparel (Clothing): Online and In Store High Spenders
- Dell Computer and Apple Mac Purchaser
Weeknight TV watchers
Back-to-school season is also back-to-routine season. Families are gathering for more shared TV time in the evenings—especially in August and September. This makes co-viewing households a prime audience for messaging tied to school-year prep.
Rethink your back-to-school approach with these five overlooked segments:
- Co-Watchers
- Co-Watchers with Children
- Cord Cutters: Recent
- Engagement Channel Preference: Streaming TV
- Digital Video
Parenting personas
Targeting by household structure helps tailor messaging to the right family dynamic—whether it’s parents with toddlers or households with college students.
Four audiences you might be missing this back-to-school season:
- Digital Moms and Dads
- Sports Utility Families
- Colleges and Cafes
- Kids and Cabernet
School-season meal planners
Food and grocery shopping routines shift during the school season. These audiences are ideal for promotions tied to lunch prep, after-school snacks, and weeknight meals.
Add these four under-the-radar audiences for back-to-school success:
- Online Grocery Delivery Services: High Spenders
- Grocery Stores: High Spenders
- Fast Food/QSR Frequent Spenders
- Fast Food/QSR Pizza Frequent Spenders
Core back-to-school shoppers
Of course, you’ll want to add traditional back-to-school audiences to your strategy. These audiences are highly engaged and often the decision-makers, making them ideal for marketers looking to drive purchase intent early and often.
Here are four key back-to-school audiences you can target–all are available by life stage to reach PreK, elementary, middle, and high school households:
- Back to School Supplies
- Back to School Moderate Spend
- Back to School High Spend
- Back to School Apparel
Make the grade with Experian this back-to-school season
As marketers gear up for the back-to-school season, it’s the perfect time to sharpen your strategy and connect with back-to-school shoppers. Whether you’re building tried-and-true segments or exploring more unexpected, high-potential groups you might have not considered, Experian can help you reach the right audience. If you’re looking to create targeted segments for activation across digital and TV or gain insights to guide your campaign planning, Experian has you covered.
Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice. Additionally, work with Experian’s network of data providers to build audiences and send to an Audigent PMP for activation.
You can activate our syndicated audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. For a full list of Experian’s syndicated audiences and activation destinations, download our syndicated audiences guide.
Explore our other seasonal audiences that you can activate today.
Activate back-to-school audiences today with Audigent
Ready to ace your back-to-school campaigns? Audigent will build customized deals that combine premium Experian syndicated or Partner Audiences and inventory into a single, streamlined deal ID – tailored to your campaign needs. Plus, our powerful supply-side optimization ensures your campaigns deliver top marks in performance.
Connect with the Audigent team today at AudigentAgency_Brands@experian.com to get a head-start on back-to-school success.
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Cross-device matching and pixel-based foot traffic attribution reporting empower digital marketers with greater control of location-based campaigns.RALEIGH, N.C. (PRWEB) AUGUST 04, 2020 Tapad, part of Experian a global leader in digital identity resolution, and Reveal Mobile, a leader in location-based marketing, today announced a collaboration that combines Tapad's digital cross-device matching technology and pixel-based attribution features with Reveal Mobile’s VISIT Local, the software that hundreds of digital agencies and brands use for location-based analytics. The partnership is designed to drive improved performance by optimizing ad targeting and messaging for location-based campaigns. Powered by Tapad’s privacy-safe cross device matching, marketers using VISIT Local to power location-based campaigns can enhance how they reach shoppers. When one member of a household shops for groceries, clothes, household goods or any other consumer item, a conversation between multiple members of the household typically takes place beforehand. With cross device matching, marketers can reach everyone who has influence over what to buy and where to buy it. VISIT Local users can expand location-based services with a single click to include devices that share the same household, including targeting across multiple devices owned by the same user, allowing advertisers to maximize messaging and increase their share of wallet among consumers. “VISIT Local has always given our customers access to high-intent location-based audiences. With the addition of cross device matching from Tapad, advertisers can boost audience sizes up to 300 percent while maintaining full confidence in quality and relevance,” says Brian Handly, CEO of Reveal Mobile. “VISIT Local users can now apply multiple criteria and attributes to a single location-based audience, giving them the advanced control and transparency they need.” As reliable attribution becomes increasingly complex for marketers and ad buyers who need to prove value, the addition of Tapad’s pixel-based foot traffic attribution to VISIT Local enables the measurement of actual campaign effectiveness by tying ad views to in-store foot traffic. This new feature, which will be available in VISIT Local this fall, lets Reveal Mobile customers understand who visited a retail location as a result of being served an ad, providing a more accurate view into return on ad spend during and after advertising campaigns. “Tapad’s goal is to empower marketers with digital advertising efficiencies at scale across devices,” says Mark Connon, COO of Tapad. “With cross device matching and pixel-based foot traffic attribution, marketers using VISIT Local can better address the consumer’s preferences and habits, and deliver them consistently actionable information on user behavior. These capabilities advance location-based advertising in ways marketers need and want.” In addition to these new features, VISIT Local’s location-based audience builder now enables marketers to create custom audiences made up of people who have visited different places on different dates. This gives VISIT Local users the ability to segment and create the most highly targeted audiences possible. For example, a marketer who wants to advertise for a chain of restaurants can easily target visitors of different competitors in different cities. Or a marketer who wants to advertise vacation destinations can target people who have been to various resorts at different times of year. Or a marketer who wants to advertise the release of new music can target people who have been to concert venues in different cities on different dates. “Many of our customers need to create highly custom audiences so they can run experiments, test messaging, and run increasingly competitive campaigns,” says Handly. “Everyone who uses VISIT Local can now apply multiple criteria and attributes to a single location-based audience, giving them the advanced control and transparency they need.”To learn more about Tapad’s digital identity resolution products, visit our identity solution page. To learn more about Reveal Mobile’s location-based marketing offerings, visit http://www.revealmobile.com. About TapadTapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Our one-of-a-kind Graph Select offering enables marketers the flexibility and freedom of choice to correlate devices to varied objectives, driving campaign effectiveness and business results. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Reveal MobileReveal Mobile is a leader in location-based marketing, analytics, audiences, and attribution. Creator of VISIT Local, VISIT Match and VISIT Data, the company’s products help digital agencies, brands and retailers of any size leverage location data to understand and reach the right audiences. Reveal Mobile is CCPA compliant and a member of the Network Advertising Initiative, which conducts an annual privacy certification. The company is based in Raleigh, NC. For more information, visit https://revealmobile.com. Contact us today
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Appendix
New year, new gear-ers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Big-Box Electronics Stores: High Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Big Box and Club Stores: Amazon Frequent Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Department Store In Store Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Apparel > Teen Apparel (Clothing): Online High Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Apparel > Teen Apparel (Clothing): In Store High Spenders
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Technology > Dell Computer Model
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Technology > Apple Mac Purchaser Model
Weeknight TV watchers
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Co-Watchers
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Co-Watchers with Children
- Experian > Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Entertainment > Streaming/Video/Audio/CTV/Cable TV: Cable/Broadcast TV: Cord Cutters: Recent
- TrueTouch: Communication Preference > Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV
- TrueTouch: Communication Preference > Engagement Channel Preference > Digital Video
Parenting personas
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Personas > Digital Moms
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Personas > Digital Dads
- Mosaic – Personas – Lifestyle and Interests > Group D: Suburban Style > D15 – Sports Utility Families
- Mosaic – Personas – Lifestyle and Interests > Group O: Singles and Starters > O53 – Colleges and Cafes
- Mosaic – Personas – Lifestyle and Interests > Group A: Power Elite > A03 – Kids and Cabernet
School-season meal planners
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Grocery > Online Grocery Delivery Services: High Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Grocery > Grocery Stores: High Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Food and Drink > Restaurants: Fast Food/QSR QSR Frequent Spenders
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Food and Drink > Restaurants > Fast Food/QSR Pizza Frequent Spenders
Core back-to-school shoppers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend – PreK (Early Ed – PreK)
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend – Elementary School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend – Middle School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend – High School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend – PreK (Early Ed – PreK)
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend – Elementary School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend – Middle School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend – High School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel – PreK (Early Ed – PreK)
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel – Elementary School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel – Middle School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel – High School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies – PreK (Early Ed – PreK)
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies – Elementary School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies – Middle School
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies – High School