Credit Cards on College Campuses

Do you think that credit cards are not still being marketed on college campuses? Guess again. They still are and will continue to be. Yes, banks are not currently marketing cards, but individuals and organizations are. Provisions outlined in the CARD Act prevent banks from prior practices, but realtionships do exist between schools and financial institutions. In fact, many powerful groups with a large outreach are profiting from marketing credit cards. The problem is that they are not doing so in the appropriate manner. This is through no fault of their own, it's primarily because there isn't a service that exists that is both cost-efficient and consumer-friendly.

Let's take student newspapers for example. As we all know, most student newspapers are funded by advertising. Several of the online versions do so in the form of banner ads, many of which are for credit cards. These aren't particularly lucrative, and they surely aren't informative. The new trend is 3rd party MLM (multi-level marketing) "includes" provided by third parties that allow newspapers to add a "widget." These widgets range from travel, housing, jobs, to financial products and all actually are run as an affiliate marketing business. However, in this case, most of them act in the same way that most MLM platforms work. The problem in this case isn't really the fact that it is an MLM platform, the problem lies in the quality, especially when it comes to the financial products. They simple list small summaries of the sttributes with links to apply buttons.

Because credit cards are a major part of college life, these are particularly attractive advertising revenue generators, especially in the case of student newspapers. A majority of the newspapers are in fact using these widgets and even though they aren't maximizing their revenue potential, they are contributing to the flow of credit cards on college campuses.

We acknowledge that this is type of monetization exists and are providing college newspapers with the ability to generate revenue while helping its reader base. By creating an extension of the paper, which many have done already by creating independent housing websites, college online publications may create monetizable financial portals which will help their readers evaluate products and discuss them online.