Amazon Ads Partners with The Branding Hub to Engage Students with New Certifications and Courses

Students presenting their end-of-semester pitches to real clients over Zoom and to industry professionals from Amazon Ads and Global Overview

In the Fall of 2021, the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising collaborated with Amazon Ads Education Alliance and Global Overview to offer an industry immersion course, ADV 392, where students engaged with company professionals such as account managers, creative managers, and strategists to participate in hands-on projects involving real world budgets and clients.  

The class was titled ADV 392: Industry Immersion Experiential Learning.

“It’s crazy to think that, as a student, [I] was working with a real budget,” said Ethan Fazio, a senior in advertising. “Being able to execute that and put it into numerics and show the client back the return that they were getting on their ad spend—it really showed me how valuable it is to be working with a client.” 

Throughout the course, the students were aided by Amazon Ads and Global Overview professionals in-class as well as at networking events. At the end of the 2021 Fall semester, students proposed their pitches to the clients, which became direct pathways for some to obtain interviews and full-time employment at both companies.  

This Fall, it is being offered as ADV 392: Amazon Advertising Certification and Global Overview Campaign Course. 

This partnership between the Sandage Department of Advertising and Amazon Ads was facilitated by U of I’s Hub for Brand Innovation and Advertising Technology, an integrative space where advertising students can cultivate ideas and become leaders in advertising and media technology.  

The success of ADV 392 over the past year has led to two new courses being developed for Fall 2022—ADV 400: Amazon Advertising Experience and ADV 490: Advanced E-Commerce Advertising. 

Learn more about the collaboration here: https://media.illinois.edu/advertising-department-collaborates-amazon-ads-industry-experience-certifications