Challenge
Navigating Brazil’s highly competitive back-to-school enrollment season
Universidade Estácio de Sá is one of Brazil’s leading higher education institutions, operating in a highly competitive and strongly seasonal market. In this context, digital performance marketing plays a critical role in driving student acquisition and sustainable enrollment results throughout the academic cycle.
Beyond the typical pressure of the January back-to-school peak — the most strategic period for the education sector — Estácio faced important challenges related to profitability, the need for a stronger presence across the consumer journey, and the expansion of communication efforts to promote specific courses rather than only institutional branding or study modalities.
To address these challenges, Cadastra incorporated Criteo into their media strategy in March 2025, leveraging its advanced technology and optimized performance-driven formats. The partnership matured steadily throughout the year, improving mid- and lower-funnel efficiency while activating Estácio’s large base of daily website visitors.
However, January would represent the ultimate test: scaling investments efficiently, maximizing conversion impact during peak demand, ensuring profitability at higher volumes, and validating incremental performance against other programmatic platforms during the most critical enrollment window of the year.
Solution
Activating a full-funnel strategy to convert demand into enrollments
Cadastra, Criteo, and Estácio de Sá joined forces to build a full-funnel strategy focused on maximizing qualified traffic, expanding unique reach, and increasing conversion impact across the enrollment journey.
The strategy combined Criteo’s high-impact formats with a clear, conversion-oriented key visual, ensuring message consistency and stronger relevance for prospective students across mid- and lower-funnel touchpoints.
A key pillar of the approach was integrating Estácio’s proprietary first-party audiences with the prospecting of new users powered by Criteo’s AI-driven audience modeling. While high-intent visitors were re-engaged with personalized messaging, advanced modeling expanded reach to new qualified prospects with similar behavioral signals.
Continuous audience analysis enabled ongoing optimization across segments, refining bidding strategies and budget allocation. At the same time, dynamic course ads prioritized programs with stronger performance signals, directing investment toward the most relevant and high-converting offerings.
Results
Driving higher enrollments while improving media efficiency
By combining data-driven optimization, premium inventory, and course-level activation, the partnership delivered incremental value beyond traditional last-click metrics, strengthening assisted conversions and overall media efficiency during highly competitive enrollment periods.
The campaigns generated more than 18,000 assisted sign-ups — representing a 50% increase while operating at 50% lower cost. Assisted enrollments reached more than 5,600, reflecting a 64% uplift, alongside a 15% higher enrollment completion rate. These results demonstrate not only higher volume, but stronger progression throughout the enrollment funnel.
Efficiency improvements further reinforced this impact. Criteo achieved a 41% lower cost per website user, along with stronger buying efficiency overall, including 33% lower CPC and 25% lower CPM compared to other programmatic platforms.
Beyond immediate conversions, Criteo also proved its relevance in longer decision-making cycles. While assisted conversions across channels typically occur within three days of interaction, Criteo maintained measurable impact across a conversion window of up to 60 days — a critical advantage in the higher education sector, where enrollment decisions naturally take longer.
“Together with Cadastra and Criteo, we
maximized performance during our most
highly competitive enrollment period, driving
more qualified conversions while significantly
improving media efficiency.”
