Online ads with diverse representation have higher recall: Facebook

A study published by Facebook looked at misrepresentation and underrepresentation in online advertising. The study was conducted in partnership with experts on the field of representation. The effort included a survey of 1,200 people, a review of more than 1,200 brand lift studies and an analysis conducted with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media of more than 1,000 Facebook video ads.

The study found:

Women are 14.1 times more likely than men to be shown in revealing clothing and are 6.9 times more likely to be visually or verbally objectified;

Men are 2.4 times more likely than women to be presented as angry and 1.4 times less likely to be shown as happy.

People with disabilities were severely underrepresented in online ads (present in only 1.1% of the ads examined) as were members of the LGBTQ+ community (0.3%)

Some 59% of consumers polled said they are more loyal to brands that stand for diversity and inclusion in online advertising, and 59% also said they prefer to buy from brands that stand for diversity and inclusion in online advertising.

Online campaigns with more diverse representation tend to have higher ad recall compared with campaigns featuring a single traditional representation. And in more than 90% of the simulations we ran, diverse representation was the winning strategy for ad recall lift.

Women tend to have higher ad recall for ads with female characters and men tend to have higher recall for ads with male characters. In other words, people seem to better recall online advertising featuring characters similar to themselves.