New Social Media Platform Fizz Gives Brands A Crash Course In Marketing To College Students | AdExchanger
image/svg+xml:
Topics
Latest
Marketers
Agencies
Publishers
Technology
Platforms
Identity
Measurement
Data Privacy
Artificial Intelligence
CTV
Commerce
AdExplainer
Exclusive Report
Daily News Roundup
Opinion
All Columns
Data-Driven Thinking
On TV & Video
The Sell Sider
Content Studio
Comic
Contributor Guidelines
About Us
Advertise
Newsletter
AdExchanger Advisory Board
About Us
Contact Us
Events
Programmatic I/O New York
AdExchanger Awards
Webinars
All Events
Network Events
Podcasts
AdExchanger Talks
The Big Story
Inside the Stack
Programmatic I/O New York
Become an AdHero
Subscribe
Sign In
Sign In
Topics
Latest
Marketers
Agencies
Publishers
Technology
Platforms
Identity
Measurement
Data Privacy
Artificial Intelligence
CTV
Commerce
AdExplainer
Exclusive Report
Daily News Roundup
Opinion
All Columns
Data-Driven Thinking
On TV & Video
The Sell Sider
Content Studio
Comic
Contributor Guidelines
Events & Awards
Programmatic I/O New York
AdExchanger Awards
Webinars
All Events
Network Events
Podcasts
AdExchanger Talks
The Big Story
Inside the Stack
Subscribe Free
Sign Up
About Us
Advertise
Newsletter
AdExchanger Advisory Board
About Us
Contact Us
CONNECT
Home Marketers New Social Media Platform Fizz Gives Brands A Crash Course In Marketing To College Students
Marketers
New Social Media Platform Fizz Gives Brands A Crash Course In Marketing To College Students By Joanna Gerber
Thursday, December 4th, 2025 – 1:00 am
SHARE:
The people who know how best to market to college students are other college students – and that’s doubly true on a social media platform whose entire user base is college students.
Teddy Solomon and Ashton Cofer dropped out of Stanford to focus full-time on Fizz, an (optionally) anonymous social media platform they co-founded in 2021 that, similar to the app Yik Yak, allows users to communicate with other students nearby.
Unlike Yik Yak, however, which is solely geography based, Fizz’s communities are based on college enrollment. Students verify their enrollment with a school email address and can then join their campus community on the app – not dissimilar to the early days of Facebook, but with an added layer of anonymity.
Meet in the middle
Fizz markets itself as a “discussion and news feed” app on which users can post text, photos and videos, either anonymously or attached to a handle. They can also communicate with other users via comment threads and direct messaging.
The app’s user base doubled between the autumn of 2024 and this year, and is roughly five times larger than when Fizz raised its Series B funding in 2023. Although it declined to share an exact user number, Fizz is now active on over 700 campuses nationwide.
Like on any nascent, rapidly growing platform, monetization and advertising quickly became a necessity. Last year, Fizz began piloting an advertising model with brands such as Perplexity and Quizlet. Advertisers can run static, text-based and video ads that link directly to an app store or an external landing page.
Although Fizz now allows multiple brands to advertise per day, it ran a test for the month of September during which it tried out a one-advertiser-per-day model, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Each day, one single brand would exclusively run on the platform, appearing only in the top-of-feed slot. The ad copy and creative would vary depending on the school and its location, like, for example, leaning into “game day” and sports-related messaging for schools with a big sports following.
Several variations of the ad would run across Fizz’s entire user base, functioning as an A/B test of sorts, said Solomon, who also serves as CEO. Whichever version performed best for the first half of the day would then be the only version displayed during the latter half.
As of now, Fizz still only offers school-level as opposed to user-level targeting.
Subscribe
AdExchanger Daily
Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.
Daily Roundup
Daily News Roundup
AI Mode, Activate; The Trade Desk Bends On Agency Incentives
But advertisers have been seeing striking results. One dating app got an 11.5% click-through rate, and its one-day takeover of Fizz helped boost its rank in the App Store from around 200 to 40.
Fizz still allows a single advertiser to reserve the premium top-of-feed spot each day, but hasn’t yet decided how to manage demand for that ad space, or a defined pricing tier.
At the moment, advertisers can only buy ads on Fizz directly, although programmatic is on the horizon, said Solomon. But it’s important to approach advertising in a “crawl, walk, run manner,” he added.
“You can’t just, like, throw a ton of programmatic ads in and call it a day,” said Solomon, “because although that might get us more money, that’s not the goal.”
The goal, he said, is to ensure that ads are personal and engaging, and that brands are happy with the results.
Know thy users
One major advantage that Fizz offers its advertisers is the cultural knowledge of its 23-year-old founders.
Most of the marketers Fizz works with “are in their 40s, or whatever,” said Solomon, whereas the Fizz team is much closer in age, and thus culture, to its user base. Solomon and his team work directly with advertisers to make sure that their campaigns don’t “come off as corporate or cringy,” he said.
Sometimes, Solomon looks at an ad and just knows that it won’t resonate – or, as he put it, that “they’re gonna meme the hell out of this.” And if an ad reads too obviously corporate, like, well, 40-somethings trying to sound like college kids, that’s an immediate red flag.
Fizz encourages advertisers to use more authentic college vernacular and adjust ad copy based on school culture and geography.
The “manual interaction” between Fizz and its marketer clients is something Solomon doesn’t want to lose.
New beginnings
One thing he doesn’t have control over losing, though, is the graduating senior class.
The problem with an app for college students is that it’s very difficult to grow when its user base cycles with every incoming class.
This unavoidable churn is why Fizz is beginning to evolve beyond college campuses into broader communities. The product is pretty hush-hush for now, but retaining its user base post-graduation is the problem that Solomon wants to solve “first and foremost.”
“A quarter of our users graduate college each year, and historically, we’ve never had somewhere to put them,” said Solomon. “That keeps me up at night.”
Next In Marketers
Why Acne Treatment Brand Differin Developed Pimple-Popping, Hormone-Dodging Roblox Games
Must Read
Agencies
Google Ad Buyers Are (Still) Being Duped By Sophisticated Account Takeover Scams
Agency buyers are facing a new wave of Google account hijackings that steal funds and lock out admins for weeks or even months.
Platforms
The Trade Desk Loses Jud Spencer, Its Longtime Engineering Lead
Spencer has exited The Trade Desk after 12 years, marking another major leadership change amid friction with ad tech trade groups and intensifying competition across the DSP landscape.
Commerce
How America’s Biggest Retailers Are Rethinking Their Businesses And Their Stores
America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.
Technology
How AudienceMix Is Mixing Up The Data Sales Business
AudienceMix, a new curation startup, aims to make it more cost effective to mix and match different audience segments using only the data brands need to execute their campaigns.
Digital Out-Of-Home
Broadsign Acquires Place Exchange As The DOOH Category Hits Its Stride
On Tuesday, digital out-of-home (DOOH) ad tech startup Place Exchange was acquired by Broadsign, another out-of-home SSP.
Social Media
Meta’s Ad Platform Is Going Haywire In Time For The Holidays (Again)
For the uninitiated, “Glitchmas” is our name for what’s become an annual tradition when, from between roughly late October through November, Meta’s ad platform just seems to go bonkers.
Popular
Platforms
The Trade Desk Loses Jud Spencer, Its Longtime Engineering Lead
Spencer has exited The Trade Desk after 12 years, marking another major leadership change amid friction with ad tech trade groups and intensifying competition across the DSP landscape.
OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking
CTV Is Less Transparent Than YouTube. That Should Alarm Everyone
CTV spending is flattening, performance is plateauing and buyers are hesitant to push budgets further. The reason is not complicated. When buyers cannot see what they are buying, they cannot commit their spend with conviction.
Commerce
How America’s Biggest Retailers Are Rethinking Their Businesses And Their Stores
America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.
Data
Media Intelligence Startup Guideline.ai Aims To Take The Guesswork Out Of Media Planning
Meet Guideline, a marketing intelligence platform that aggregates anonymized agency billing data to generate data-driven insights on media spend, pricing and market trends.
PODCAST: AdExchanger Talks
Making Your Brand Matter To The Models
You can’t buy your way to the top of a large-language model. At least not yet. But there are things that brands can do to influence how – and if – they get mentioned, says Tracy Morrissey, SVP of media and performance at full-service agency Innocean USA.
Join the AdExchanger Community
Join Now
Your trusted source for in-depth programmatic news, views, education and events.
AdExchanger is where marketers, agencies, publishers and tech companies go for the latest information on the trends that are transforming digital media and marketing, from data, privacy, identity and AI to commerce, CTV, measurement and mobile.
NEXT EVENT
Most Powerful Women
December 4, 2025CurrentNew York, NY
Learn More
ABOUT ADEXCHANGER
About Us
Advertise
Contact Us
Events
Subscribe
RSS
Cookie Settings
Privacy & Terms
Accessibility
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging
CONNECT
© 2025 Access Intelligence, LLC - All Rights Reserved |
Fizz, a relatively new social media platform, is carving out a unique niche by directly targeting college students, offering brands a novel approach to marketing within a demographic notoriously difficult to reach. Founded in 2021 by Teddy Solomon and Ashton Cofer, Fizz operates as a discussion and news feed app, mirroring the functionality of platforms like Yik Yak but centered around college enrollment rather than geographic location. This focus—verifying users through school email addresses—immediately creates a highly engaged and relevant user base.
The platform's growth, doubling between 2024 and the present, underscores the potential of this targeted approach. Fizz's strategy involves piloting advertising models, initially experimenting with a one-advertiser-per-day model to maximize impact. This approach leverages A/B testing, analyzing which ad versions resonate best with the user base, demonstrating a keen understanding of consumer behavior. However, the company acknowledges the inherent challenge of user churn—approximately 25% of users graduating annually—and is actively exploring solutions beyond college campuses to retain this critical demographic.
A key differentiator for Fizz is the founders’ intimate understanding of their target audience. Solomon and his team, being approximately 23 years old, possess a cultural awareness and vernacular that resonates deeply with college students, preventing the often-problematic “corporate cringe” that can alienate younger consumers. The company consciously encourages advertisers to adopt authentic college slang and adjusts messaging accordingly. This manual interaction, prioritized by Solomon, is viewed as essential to brand success.
Despite the platform’s early success, Fizz recognizes the need to evolve. The focus currently remains on school-level advertising, but the company is anticipating future challenges related to user retention. The team is acutely aware of the cyclical nature of college enrollment and is strategizing to address this “user churn,” which keeps Solomon up at night. Currently, Fizz only provides direct advertising opportunities and is on the cusp of integrating programmatic advertising, though Solomon emphasizes a cautious, phased approach, prioritizing engagement and brand resonance over sheer volume. This demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of a novel market, and hints at future growth potential. |