Clearing 2023
Maximise your university applications with a killer Clearing campaign on The Student Room. Contact us for inspiration.
Clearing solutions
The number one destination for students applying through Clearing. We create winning marketing campaigns that will smash your Clearing student recruitment targets:
Always on - Brand building
Clearing forum sponsorship
Display advertising
Clearing sponsored content
The Uni Guide
UPP Unlimited
Always on - Engagement
Email and SMS - full database
Listicle emails
Official Reps
Clearing TSR Talks
Research
Research products
Conversion
The Uni Guide lead generation (cost-per-lead)
Competitor targeting SMS or emails
Ada programmatic (offsite retargeting with conversion tracking)
Course interest and location targeting
Email and SMS - targeted
Clearing forum sponsorship
Clearing sponsored content
Clearing Forum Sponsorship
Sponsor a forum to maximise your exposure to Clearing applicants
This excellent brand awareness campaign lets you takeover a forum with high-impact display. Make an impression where students are making important decisions about Clearing. You can choose from a range of application and subject-specific forums to target your ideal audience (see media pack for details).
Applicants will mentally associate your brand with useful content that helped them to plan their futures.

Display
High visibility on the UK's largest online student platform
All campaigns are highly targeted, meaning every impression makes a powerful impact on a receptive student audience. We serve your ads alongside our top-performing Clearing content, securing you the maximum traffic, exposure, and engagement rates.
Our experts put different creatives through a rigorous testing process and optimise towards the best-performing ad formats, so you get brilliant results.
Clearing Sponsored Content
Position your brand on articles that help Clearing applicants secure a university place
By co-branding with The Student Room you will leverage the trust students place in our platform. You will also position your brand as the authoritative voice on your chosen topic.
Roadblock your content with display advertising for a winning solution that encourages undecided or unplaced students to engage.
The Uni Guide
Convert Clearing applicants with our powerful direct response tool
The Uni Guide attracts a highly-qualified audience of students who are making their final university choices. Lead buttons on your profile encourage prospective applicants to: request a prospectus, submit an enquiry, book an open day, or visit your website. We also boost your traffic using search promotion. In Clearing 2022, we saw a 89% year-on-year increase in total leads generated. During Clearing, we can also boost your courses to the top of search. This promotes your listing to one of the top three positions for two weeks and increases weekly leads by 160% and CTR by 94% on average.
Guarantee a great return on your investment with our fixed price cost-per-action model.
Ada - the market-leading programmatic solution
Are your digital ads being seen in Clearing?
Our programmatic solution, Ada, retargets The Student Room’s audience with your digital ads in brand-safe locations off-site. See how it's worked for Aston University.
By combining our powerful audience insights with industry-leading retargeting technology and precise conversion-tracking, we drive exceptional results for your Clearing campaign.
With 87% average viewability - the highest in the HE sector - we ensure your Clearing campaign gets exceptional results.

Email Clearing applicants
Reach our entire Clearing database
Students in our Clearing database are waiting to hear from universities like you.
Open to delivered rate to our full database gets an average of 48.7%.
In 2022, one university achieved an open rate of 66.7% and a CTO of 7.7%.

Listicle emails
An authentic way to reach a minimum of 100,000 prospective Clearing applicants
Feature in a listicle email to reach a huge student audience by splitting your share of voice with other universities. Listicles give students the perception of choice, resulting in a more authentic, user-centric experience. Avergae clicks per unique client URL in a listicle is 15.1%.
Choose from Premium and Standard slots (depending on your needs and budget).
These emails give students a high-value, authentic user experience because they offer choice.

SMS
Text students about Clearing places in Results Week
Students are never far from their mobile phones.
Get instant exposure to thousands of Clearing applicants by sending an SMS in Results Week.
Click-to-deliver rate 4.8%

Competitor targeted email or SMS
Reach applicants who are interested in your closest competitors
Competitor targeting drives amazing performance by focussing your message on a high intent audience. Tell us who your top ten competitors are and we will build a bespoke database of Clearing applicants who are expressly interested in those universities (and yours). Your email or SMS will reach applicants in the run-up to A-level Results Day, ensuring your university is front-of-mind during the prime consideration stage of their decision-making journey.
Available to a maximum of 10 clients (August pre-results day send).
Subject-specific marketing - Email and SMS
Target applicants who have opted-in to hear about specific courses
84% of Clearing opt-ins declared at least one subject interest. Target Clearing applicants who are showing a strong interest in your course or faculty. Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze targeted sends available by email and SMS:
Target by location
PLATINUM
London
International
South East
GOLD
W Midlands
NW England
E England
SILVER
SW Yorkshire & the Humber
SW England
E Midlands
BRONZE
NE England
Wales
N Ireland
Scotland
Target by subject
PLATINUM
Business and Management
Computer Science, Games and IT
Engineering
GOLD
Accounting and Finance
Art and Design
Biological Sciences
Chemistry
Economics
Education and Teaching
Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences
Health Sciences and Professions
Law
Mathematics
Psychology
SILVER
Architecture
Building, Construction and Planning
English
History
Information Services
Languages and culture
Linguistics
Media, Journalism and Communication
Medicine and medical sciences
Nursing and midwifery
Philosophy
Politics
Sociology, criminology and other social sciences
Theology and Religious Studies
BRONZE
Dance, Drama, Theatre and Music
Dentistry
Marketing
Physics
Sports and Exercise Science
Veterinary Science and Medicine
Clearing TSR Talks
Your experts attract Clearing applicants
Showcase your most inspiring experts and use their star power to attract Clearing applicants. Your Guest Speaker will author a discussion and respond to students' questions live on our platform. We'll promote your TSR Talk and roadblock competitor ads so that only your brand will appear on your page for a year. You'll also get expert youth engagement training.
We only host one TSR Talk per week during Clearing, so book early.
UPP Unlimited
Connect with Clearing applicants at every stage of the journey
UPP Unlimited supports an always-on approach to brand awareness and drives engagement with Clearing applicants at every stage in their decision-making journey. The package encompasses an impactful mix of media and engagement tools to enable you to attract, engage, convert and understand a huge audience of potential applicants and students. UPP Unlimited includes:
- On-site targeted impressions
- Impressions from off-site remarketing
- Three Official Rep accounts
- University Guide (ad-blocked)
- University forum (ad-blocked)
- Lead generation on The Uni Guide
- Course listing promotion on The Uni Guide
- Keyword alerts
- Two questions in our monthly omnibus survey to a Year 12 & 13 audience
- Exclusive access to student research (inc. Navigating Changing Options)
- Discount on other TSR products*
*Some exclusions apply (please ask your Account Manager)

Research
TSR Insight is our in-house full-service market research agency and has exclusive access to The Student Room community for market research. The team specialises in higher education and is reliable, flexible and easy to brief.
These research services are ideal for Clearing:
- TSR Asks - monthly omnibus survey targeting prospective university applicants
- Vote and Tell - test your Clearing creatives on our student audience
How we measure your campaign
We provide an end of campaign report to give you a deep understanding of the performance of our Clearing products against your campaign objectives.
We use a variety of metrics including:
- Traffic
- Click-through rates
- Viewability
- Conversion tracking for programmatic campaigns
- Email open and click-to-open rates
- SMS send numbers
- Pageviews and dwell time on content