Gender roles in online advertising

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on gender roles in advertising on YouTube using a content-analysis approach that addresses the unique functionalities and characteristics of online advertising formats and its consumers. The data was collected from Germany and Israel, based on 311 advertisements providing 473 central characters. The results provide evidence for stereotyping in online advertising. These findings are slightly different from previous studies on gender roles in traditional advertising. Stereotyping in advertising on YouTube mainly draws on physical characteristics (e.g. body shape, height), but not occupational status (e.g. professional). In contrast, in traditional advertising stereotyping draws more on occupational status. The degree of stereotyping based on role behaviours is similar in both traditional and social media advertising. The country-specific results show that gender roles in advertising show cross-cultural differences, defying the assumption of YouTube as a uniform globalized online platform for ads. These findings have implications for advertisers asking to improve the efficiency of online ads that use stereotypes and for researchers and regulators, underlining the importance of the ongoing political debate on what constitutes appropriate regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• gender roles
• gender stereotypes
• online advertising
• YouTube advertising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Skippable or TrueView pre-roll ads (Belanche et al., 2017) allow users to skip an advertisement after 5 seconds to the video content that they intended to watch or to view the whole in-stream advertisement.

_2. Trending aims to surface videos that a wide range of viewers would find interesting, They are ranked mainly with the help of the view count (YouTube Help, 2022b).

_3. Background sync allows sites, even after being recently closed, to finish sending and receiving data (TrishTech, 2017). Therefore, blocked background sync should have ensured that the data transfer is stopped after closing the YouTube tab and will not affect sampling in future YouTube tabs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Osnat Roth-Cohen

Osnat Roth-Cohen is senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Ariel University in Israel. Her primary research interests focus on digital advertising and social media discourse and its impact on environmental and social issues, while secondary research interests include public relations in new media and the evolution of advertising. Her work has been published in: Journal of Advertising, Public Relations Review; International Journal of Communication; Feminist Media Studies; Journal of Communication Inquiry, Current Issues in Tourism, among others.

Halyna Sofiia Kanevska

Halyna Sofiia Kanevska is a PhD student and research assistant for the Chair of Marketing at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt Oder, Germany. She has a marketing and international business administration background and teaches several under- and graduate marketing courses. She gathered work experience in marketing, advertising and consulting, and participated in different NGOs’ incentives for social action. Her current research interests are gender roles, stereotyped advertising and consumers’ response towards it. In co-authorship with Prof. Dr. Eisend, she recently published a chapter on Stereotyping in Marketing in The SAGE Handbook of Marketing Ethics.

Martin Eisend

Martin Eisend is Professor of Marketing at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder, Germany. He has published over 80 articles in peer-reviewed international journals, such as the Journal of Marketing, Information Systems Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Retailing, Research Policy or Journal of Product Innovation Management. Martin serves on the editorial review boards of all major marketing communication journals and is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Advertising.