Why Different Ad Visuals Work Best For Different Genders
By Brian 
You know the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
In addiction treatment marketing, sometimes that adage is especially true when you’re searching for clients of different genders.
But first, let’s talk about the areas of addiction advertising where visuals reign supreme over copy (note: this isn’t an excuse for poor copywriting):
- Programmatic advertising
- Display advertising
- Facebook advertising (although copywriting needs to quickly communicate your message in a busy feed)
- LinkedIn (although, again, copy must stand out on a text-heavy site)
Now let’s talk about how the visuals in each of these ads can reach particular audiences, communicate particular messages, or highlight particular goals.
The men and women in your ads
You might be surprised to realize that women are somewhat underrepresented in advertising as a whole, with men appearing in ads 4 times more often than women, across industries—that’s 25% of ads featuring men and 5% of ads featuring women. (We should note that all data used in this article refers to the person’s self-reported gender.)
Yet, at the same time, research shows us that the female image converts better than the male image. In fact, images of females works equally well in converting both female and male customers across ages.
Female customers typically prefer images of women they can identify with, so this means images where females have their faces turned away from the camera, are featured as silhouettes, or are seen posed in nature.
Male customers typically respond better to images of women looking at them directly and smiling—and this is true regardless of sexual orientation, as well.
Keep these tips in mind when choosing images for ads if you’re looking to attract a particular gender for, say, an all-male treatment program or a mixed-gender outpatient group.
The colors in your ads
Yes, even the response to color is different across genders.
One aspect of color that is universal across genders is that hyper-saturated images (brighter colors and pigments) make people click more often. This is especially important to remember when you’re launching ads on social media platforms like Instagram that are typically viewed on small screens where brighter colors are more appealing (approximately 87% of Instagram users are mobile-first.)
Men are more likely to be attracted to red hues, whereas blue is equally popular among male and female audiences.
In the treatment industry, some of the most popular color schemes include blue hues, however, so you may want to consider red, green, and orange as differentiators.
The video in your ads
Video converts well among both genders, but is seen as slightly more effective among women, who have shown an even stronger preference for action footage, such as GoPro video.
If we break the footage down by type, we can see that both handheld “shaky camera” footage and smoother Steadicam video converts equally well among audiences of both genders.
The subject matter in your ads
In general, male audiences respond more positively to outdoor images than indoor images (majority male audiences will choose outdoor shots approximately 70% of the time.)
Female audiences, on the other hand, are split roughly 50-50 between outdoor and indoor images. They respond stronger to silhouettes, outlines, and figures that resemble females—and even better to parts of the body such as arms and hands.
As you’re putting together gender-specific ads, though, it’s a good idea to remember that while visuals resonate differently with different genders, so do purchase cycles. In general, male audiences tend to make immediate purchases while women take longer to convert, sometimes up to 8 weeks.
Related Posts