Advertising Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 291 advertising schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 251 advertising schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 97% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 63.6% of the 291 advertising schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.4% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Black (6.9%), blue (5.8%) and yellow (5.2%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on advertising school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest advertising schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%
2. The University of Texas at Austin: white 9% and grey 4.4%
3. University of Florida: white 39% and grey 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 46.7%, of advertising school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on advertising school websites include Verdana (16.8%) and Helvetica (9.3%).

The largest advertising school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Central Florida: Arial
2. The University of Texas at Austin: Bitstream Vera Sans
3. University of Florida: Trebuchet Ms

Social Presence

Exactly 197 advertising schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 191 YouTube channel subscribers. The advertising schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus: 2,357 subscribers
2. University of Oregon: 2,253 subscribers
3. Auburn University: 2,016 subscribers

Exactly 221 advertising schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,600 Twitter account followers. The advertising schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Miami Ad School - Miami Beach: 23,734 followers
2. Auburn University: 17,795 followers
3. The University of Texas at Austin: 16,128 followers

Web Metrics

Although all advertising schools have websites, only about 20% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 80.8% of advertising school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The advertising schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links
2. Vincennes University: 3,603 broken links
3. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University: 2,283 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on advertising school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The advertising school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Drake University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Hofstra University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Appalachian State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The advertising school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Winthrop University: 365 HTML validation errors; 99 CSS validation errors
2. Metropolitan State University: 435 HTML validation errors; 5 CSS validation errors
3. University of Nebraska - Lincoln: 0 HTML validation errors; 420 CSS validation errors