Advertising, gender diversity, brands and charity: 5 interesting stats to start your week

One in four UK ads feature women over 40

Just over a quarter (28%) of UK ads featured women aged above 40 in 2023, finds research from Kantar. This marks a significant increase from the year prior when the figure was closer to one in five (21%).

Almost a third (31%) of UK advertising also featured women with diverse body shapes, a proportion that is nearly double the global average.

While these statistics may give reason for optimism, the majority of advertising continues to depict women in stereotypical roles. Just 8% of UK advertising in 2023 depicted women in non-traditional roles, with examples of women in roles like nurses and caregivers continuing to dominate.

The majority of campaigns still lean towards more favourable representations of men, with personal care the category where consumers perceive women to be portrayed more positively than men.

“It’s heartening to see the progress being made in UK campaigns. However, the data on non-traditional gender portrayals shows that there’s still plenty of work to do – and that goes for representations of men as well as women,” says Kantar’s head of creative excellence, Lynne Deason.

She adds there is “a commercial imperative” to get this right, pointing to Amazon’s 2023 Christmas ad ‘Joy Ride’, which was praised for its positive portrayal of older women and scored extremely well on ad rankings of effectiveness.

Source: Kantar

Ads viewed in the living room have highest chance of ad recall

Consumers respond best to advertising they view while in the living room, with a combination of factors meaning the environment lends itself more to ad recall, according to research by Thinkbox.

The first of these factors is the professionalism of the video content that the advertising appears alongside. High-quality, professionally made video content drives 60% higher recall for the advertising it appears alongside versus non-professional content.

People are also 44% more likely to trust an advert seen within professional content and 39% more likely to find the advertising entertaining. The vast majority of content viewed in the living room is professionally produced.

Another factor that makes the living room conducive to an effective environment for advertising is the size of the screen. Viewers seeing an ad on a TV screen are 34% more likely to recall it than when it is seen on a computer, and 60% more likely to recall versus viewing it on a tablet or smartphone.

Shared viewing occasions are also more likely to take place in the living room, which again increases ad recall, according to the research. The study finds that ad recall increases by 23% when watching with others.

Being in a good mood, or feeling satisfied with the occasion, is another factor that increases ad recall, the research finds.

The study identifies that, with the best combination of in-home factors (in the living room, watching professional content on a TV set with others, feeling satisfied with the occasion), average ad recall was 32.5%. This is compared to an average ad recall of 5.1% for the weakest combination of factors (in the kitchen, watching non-professional content on your own).

Thinkbox suggests this means the right in-home advertising context can increase ad recall by up to 6.3 times.

Source: Thinkbox

Women with lighter skin tones four times more likely to appear in ads

Women with lighter skin tones were four times more likely to appear in advertising than those with darker skin tones in 2023, according to research from CreativeX.

This is an improvement compared to the previous year, with the representation of women with darker skin tones increasing by 63% year over year. Even with this improvement, just one in five ads featured women with darker skin tones in 2023.

Advertising spend is also undermining diversity and representation efforts, the research suggests. Ad spend behind content featuring women with darker skin tones actually decreased 9% year over year in 2023. Conversely, the spend behind ads featuring those with lighter skin tones increased by 2%.

Over four in five (82%) media dollars on ads with women was spent on content featuring women with lighter skin tones, the research finds.

The research also finds that older men are 25% more likely to be featured in advertising than older women. Overall, ads featuring people aged over 60 received just 1.2% of total ad spend, which represents a decrease of almost one third (33%) from 2022.

Source: CreativeX

Consumers more likely to buy a brand that donates to charity

Just under half (45%) of consumers say they are more likely to buy a brand if it advertises it will donate to a charity.

A very small proportion (5%) say that such an ad actually makes them less likely to buy a brand, while a significant chunk of consumers (36%) say that it makes no difference to their purchase decision.

Consumers aged over 55 are most likely to say that a brand advertising that it will donate to a charitable cause makes no difference to their purchase decision, with over two in five (41%) expressing this opinion of apathy.

By contrast, over half (53%) of 18- to 24-year-olds say they are more likely to buy from a brand that advertises its donations to charity, making them the most likely age group to be swayed by this.

Source: YouGov

Girls more likely to actively participate in social media versus boys

Almost half (45%) of girls aged 10 to 14 are actively participating in social media, compared to 37% of boys of the same age.

This is particularly true on TikTok, where girls dominate (58% versus 42% of boys).

YouTube was named the favourite video content platform across genders (57% for boys and 39% for girls), though TikTok came in a close second for girls (only 11% for boys versus 28% for girls).

The research notes that use of other platforms is fairly consistent at this age. However, boys are more likely to engage with video content inside of video games (45% of boys versus 30% of girls), and girls are more likely to watch content on paid for streaming services (e.g. Netflix – 69% of boys versus 77% of girls).

The report, by Kids Industries, also looked at the types of fandom that boys and girls are likely to belong to. Over a quarter (26%) of boys have a gaming fandom, versus 8% of girls. Girls are much more likely to be a fan of a musician or band, with 16% of girls belonging to this type of fandom versus 1% of boys.

Source: Kids Industries