Gender & Age Diversity in Global Ad Creative

Marketers wield enormous power in effecting cultural norms by how they portray people and situations in brand stories. Since the dawn of advertising, who is cast to "play" consumers and who we hear speaking sets standards around beauty, gender roles, who makes purchase decisions, and more.

In December 2022, ER released the first-ever, large-scale diversity and accessibility benchmarks for the ad industry in North America. That study analysed 1 million TV and Video ads that were deployed in the US/Canada and publicly available.

The methodology grew out of the expanding proprietary work we do with individual clients.

This new global study is an expansion of the gender and age portion of the North American analysis.

Because race and ethnicity populations and census designations vary significantly by region, we are working with industry organisations worldwide to ensure that our analysis is both relevant and accurate. We will issue a separate report on those findings in the future.

The analysis leverages proven artificial intelligence and machine learning models to analyze video brand stories deployed across regions. In addition, for sample validation and especially for data returned by technology with low confidence levels, we employed diverse human review.

Our purpose is twofold. First, to provide the industry at large with evolving benchmark tracking that is robust in scale to ensure data integrity. But the real power of benchmarks plays out at the marketer level, enabling each unique business to set goals and understand their specific efforts in this area.

This is just the beginning. In addition to the core metrics you see in this benchmark report, our future roadmap includes exploration of new areas such as analyzing diversity of principal actors vs. extras and accurately reporting on additional characteristics, such as body type and the presence of people with disabilities.

Marketing is the art of persuasion and resonance. The magic of storytelling is far from formulaic. But part of the magic embraces the wonders of diversity and the opportunities it presents.

What do consumers see and hear today? How has that changed over the last 4 years? How do your unique brand stories look and sound against this baseline data?

We present this data for the global industry to interpret with regard to setting future goals. We are proud to move marketing forward in this critical area.

Download report here.