The Yard
The Yard is a campus marketing marketplace that connects brands with verified college students and student organizations for digital and in-person campaigns. The platform uses .edu email verification to ensure authenticity, provides a Yard score combining on-campus influence with social reach, and handles payments through Stripe with funds held in escrow until work is approved.
- Advertising Technology
- Marketing Technology
- Commerce & Shopping
- Creator / Creative Economy
- Software Only
- Artificial Intelligence
Funding
Founders
Founder details are not available yet.
Product
Problem
Brands struggle to reach Gen Z consumers authentically on college campuses, often relying on influencer platforms that include fake accounts or non-students. This makes it difficult to verify authenticity, measure real campus influence, and run campaigns that resonate with students at the moment they are forming brand preferences.
Solution
The Yard is a campus marketing marketplace that bridges brands and college students by connecting companies with Greek life, athletes, student organizations, and individual creators. The platform uses .edu email verification to ensure all creators are real students, and it provides tools for brands to filter creators by campus and niche, launch campaigns, review submissions, and track analytics. Students and organizations can apply to brand campaigns, submit deliverables, and receive payments through the platform. The Yard supports both digital campaigns, such as Instagram takeovers and TikTok challenges, and in-person activations like pop-ups and sampling events on campus.
Target Audience
Primary customers are brands and companies seeking to run marketing campaigns targeting Gen Z college students, as well as student creators, student organizations, and Greek life chapters looking to monetize their campus influence.
Features
- .edu email verification to confirm student status and prevent fake accounts
- Yard score combining on-campus influence signals (teams led, club memberships, engagement, reliability) with follower counts for a more complete creator profile
- Smart search allowing brands to filter creators by school, major, school year, student orgs, city, and connected platforms
- Campaign management workflow including applications, deliverable review, approval tracking, and deadlines
- Analytics dashboard showing views, engagement rate, cost per 1,000 views, and top creators with platform breakdowns
- Support for both individual student creators and student organizations (e.g., sororities, clubs, Greek life)
- Integration with Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn to pull profile data, audience stats, and post performance
- Stripe-powered payment processing with funds held in escrow until work is approved, plus identity and tax verification
- AI-powered features for generating responses, summarizing submitted documents, and producing insights and recommendations