• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, January 31, 2020

Think with Google, a blog-like report issued periodically by the search engine, notes  Nielsen data that says from 2014-2018, women  made up 46% to 47% of the  Super Bowl audience. But Google’s research says “the advertising running during the game hasn’t caught up to the people watching it.”

Nor has it kept up with the times, the post implies.

Google’s researchers “evaluated ” a representative sample 273 Super Bowl ads shown from 2015-2019. It says in those ads, men were two times more likely than women to be portrayed as leaders, and guys were more than 2.5 times more likely to have speaking parts than women.

Women in ads were about three times more likely to be “skinny or very skinny” and somewhat true to the stereotype of ads pitched to men.  When women are seen in commercials, they were 10.5% more likely to be shown wearing “revealing clothing,” and 7.5% more likely to be shown “in a state of partial nudity.”

And “a  far greater percentage of male characters are portrayed as ‘average size’ than female characters” -- 74.4%, compared to 48.8% --t he Think with Google report says.

Men in ads are significantly older -- nearly twice as likely to be 40 or older,. For women,  77.4% appear to be under the age of 40.
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The blog post begins, “For much of its existence, the NFL’s big game has been home to ads that featured action, comedy, and plenty of men. When women were featured at all, there was a good chance they’d be sporting a bikini,” though it presents no statistical proof of that.

Think with Google then notes,  “In our ongoing work with The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, we found that marketing content on YouTube featuring female led and gender-balanced content attracted 30% more views than male-dominant videos, despite representing less than half of all the videos we studied.”

Among the advertisers the study came across, Procter & Gamble brands seemed to get high marks, including this year’s ad for Secret that will continue its campaign of support for women’s soccer issues, and an Oil of Olay ad that features Nicole Stott, a space shuttle mission veteran who spent more than 100 days aboard the International Space Station.

P&G also earns plaudits for its Always ad in 2015 that showed the bias culture has created when people are asked to perform physical tasks, like running or throwing a ball “Like a Girl,”also the title of the ad.