WHERE CONTINUING EDUCATION COMPETES

191 of the 299 institutions with a verified ad account ran at least one ad from their continuing education unit. For most, that unit is a minor advertiser next to the rest of the institution.

Your CE unit competes first inside its own institution's advertising. About a quarter of institutions with 20 or more ads ran none for CE. At the median, CE is one ad in seventeen in Canada and one in forty in the US.

Of the 85 Canadian institutions that ran CE-unit ads, 7 ran half of Canada's total. In the US, 11 of 106 ran half. Concentration holds inside subjects too.

If you compete with one of these schools for the same learners, you face a steady stream of ads. MIT alone runs 26% of US Data & AI CE-unit ads. UBC Vancouver runs about 30% of Canada's Data & AI, IT and Leadership ads. The top-ten lists are in Table A3.

41 of 50 institutions in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba advertise their CE unit. Ontario is at 65% and Atlantic Canada at 23%. Every US Census region sits between 56% and 65%.

Western Canada advertises most; the US is even. 41 of 50 institutions in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba advertise their CE unit (82%), Ontario 35 of 54 (65%), Atlantic Canada 3 of 13 (23%). In every US Census region, 56 to 65% do. Volume concentrates in the Northeast: 21% of US institutions, 32% of US CE-unit ads. Region tables in A1 and A2.

Counting the institutions whose CE unit advertised each subject in each region: 29 in the US South run Business ads, 23 in the West. In Ontario, 15 of the province's 35 CE advertisers do.

The quiet fields are as telling as the crowded ones. Indigenous Knowledge and Culture has 22 ads from 7 institutions across both countries. Dalhousie is Nova Scotia's only CE advertiser, and all 83 of its ads are brand ads. Region is the institution's home, not where the ad was shown.

Institutions use Google at about the same rate in both countries. LinkedIn differs: 54% of Canadian institutions with an account ran CE-unit ads there, against 37% in the US.

LinkedIn is where CE units sell the unit, not the program. Brand ads are 28.5% of LinkedIn CE-unit ads, against 16% on Google and 12% on Meta. CE units rarely use video: on LinkedIn in Canada, 4.3% of CE-unit ads are video, against 23% of the institutions' other ads. 24 of 85 Canadian CE advertisers run no Google CE ads at all.

Data Analytics & AI is 17% of US CE-unit ads against 10% in Canada. Canadian CE units devote more of their ads to the unit itself: 26.5% promote the CE brand without naming a subject, against 15.5% in the US.

Brand advertising is a choice, and schools make it differently. Among the top ten advertisers, brand ads are 61% of Harvard's CE-unit ads and 51% of Toronto Metropolitan's, but 3% of MIT's and none of Johns Hopkins'. The by-school table is A5.

Ads by subject

Arts & Creative

Business & Management

Data Analytics & AI

Education & Adult Learning

Environment & Science

Health & Wellness

Healthcare & Medicine

History, Culture, & Society

IT & Cybersecurity

Indigenous Knowledge & Culture

Languages

Leadership & Communication

Mental Health & Counselling

Public & Social Services

Trades & Technical

Brand

Ads reproduced for commentary and research. Rights remain with the advertisers; contact research@credscape.io to remove one.

"Micro-credential" appears in 4.7% of Canadian CE-unit ads with text and 0.2% of American ones: 123 ads against 12. Degrees and master's programs run the other way, 13% in the US against 3%. Canadian ads also sell flexibility, American ads AI and leadership.

Nobody names a rival, and almost nobody names a price. None of the 7,908 ads mentions another provider. 60 show a price, 1 in 132; another 59 show a scholarship or discount amount. Flexible or part-time study appears in 22% of Canadian ads against 10% in the US; AI in 10% of American ads against 6%. Info-session ads are mostly one institution: Simon Fraser runs 158 of Canada's 248.

What the ads say, in the ads

Flexible or part-time

AI

Micro-credential

Degree or master's

Info session

Free

Urgency

A price

Ads reproduced for commentary and research. Rights remain with the advertisers; contact research@credscape.io to remove one.

58 of Canada's 85 CE advertisers and 69 of America's 106 run brand ads: ads for the CE unit that name no subject or program. 30 Canadian and 38 US institutions keep one running every month.

The advertisers that never go quiet run brand ads alongside program ads. 38 of 39 in Canada, 52 of 66 in the US. Brand ads are shorter-lived than program ads on Google (220 against 500 days median in Canada, 267 against 377 in the US), so staying visible means renewing them.

Many of these ads run for years. 1,891 CE-unit ads from 65 institutions were still running in October 2026 after starting about two years earlier or more. The oldest, from UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, have run since at least October 2021.

If you advertise only at intake, your competitors are visible between your campaigns. 92% of Johns Hopkins' 306 running ads started two or more years ago. At the other end, 31 of 191 CE advertisers had nothing running in the 30 days before collection. Half of Google CE-unit ads run longer than a year; a quarter of Meta ads run a week or less.