Most marketing professors choose a simulation by default. The textbook publisher bundles one. A colleague recommends what they used last year. The department keeps whatever the previous instructor set up. None of that is a criticism. Evaluating simulation platforms is not what anyone got into academia to do, and most of us have better calls on our time than vendor demos in August. But the cost of defaulting in 2026 is higher than it was in 2022, because what students need to

We sat down with Milt to speak about the complexities of helping students find solid footing in a rapidly changing marketing industry.

We sat down with Dr. Vuković to discuss the five-week course she developed using Novela’s Search Marketing (Google Ads) Simulation and Social Media Advertising (Meta Ads) Simulation

John Ploumitsakos is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Marketing at Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose 20 years of marketing experience, including senior leadership positions at Google and Twitter, give him unique insights into the modern marketing landscape. In his senior-level Advertising and Promotion Management course, for example, Ploumitsakos breaks the semester into three segments: planning a budget, creative strategy, and brand stra

Alicja Grzadziel is a PhD candidate and a research associate at the Institute for Interactive Marketing & Social Media (IMSM) at WU Vienna. Her research focuses on both brand communication, particularly how misleading claims affect brand perception, and ways user-generated content, such as dupe videos, can impact brands’ sales performance. Studying such current topics in digital marketing makes Grzadziel uniquely qualified to teach the next generation of digital marketers, w

Novela, the marketing simulation platform used at over 40 universities including Columbia, Northwestern Kellogg, Imperial College London, King's College London, Oxford, and McGill, today announced Novela AI Search — its sixth simulation and the first interactive training environment designed to teach marketing decisions in an AI-powered search landscape.

There's a particular flavour of panic that strikes when you've just finished updating your syllabus, and you realise the technology you're teaching has already moved on. If you're a marketing professor who's spent the past semester teaching students to craft the perfect ChatGPT prompt, I have some unfortunate news: prompt engineering, as we've known it, is becoming a foundation skill rather than an end goal. Rather like teaching students to type efficiently - necessary, certa

When Anthropic announced that Claude Sonnet 4.5 could run autonomously for thirty hours, it raised a simple but awkward question for...

"This game is a good approximation of what it is we are trying to build internally for ourselves here at EY. You just got a glimpse into the future."

While 75% of working marketers now use generative AI daily, most marketing syllabi still cover Google Ads interfaces from years past. The gap between what we teach and what students need in their first jobs has never been wider - and it's growing every semester.

Mastering LLM collaboration in a simulation environment offers several critical advantages over learning through trial and error in real-world implementations

Students don’t just need to understand what AI is; they need to see how it's already being used in the real world, by companies large and small, successful and struggling. They need examples that are concrete, discussable, and recent enough to matter. This collection of case studies is designed to help.

This guide explores how educators can meaningfully integrate AI ethics into marketing curricula, with a specific focus on practical, hands-on experiences that prepare students for the real-world ethical challenges they'll face. We'll pay special attention to Week 8 of our curriculum blueprint and show how Novela's AI Marketing Simulation creates a safe environment for students to engage with these critical issues.

You need a realistic, risk‑free way for students to experience algorithm‑driven marketing platforms. That’s where the Novela AI Marketing Simulation comes in.

"There's a growing divide between what's taught in marketing programs and what's practiced in industry," explains Clark Boyd, CEO of Novela. "Students are graduating with theoretical knowledge of AI marketing but little practical experience using these tools to make strategic decisions." This skills gap presents both a challenge for educators and an opportunity for forward-thinking students.

As creators of marketing simulations covering search marketing, social media, and AI-powered marketing, the Novela team has observed thousands of students and identified key patterns that separate top performers from the rest. Here's what we've learned about winning at marketing simulations.

At Novela, we believe the answer to the skills gap lies in experiential learning through AI marketing simulations. We're excited to announce our newest addition: AI-Powered Marketing Strategy Simulation—a learning environment where students develop practical AI marketing skills by making real-time decisions with sophisticated AI tools including GPT-4.5 for content generation and performance data analysis.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of Novela's newest digital marketing simulation: AI Marketing Strategy

We are thrilled to introduce our new course, Applied Digital Marketing: Real-World Skills for Success , designed to equip you with...

Novela's innovative marketing simulations teach the principles of marketing through active learning and immersive stories.