Advertising to Men: Is He Cheap or Does He Have Expensive Taste? A Shifting Social Demo

Shopping, browsing and social habits point to a sophisticated modern man. How should you be marketing to him? Some new studies give us clues.

Men are Cheap

Cheaper to advertise to on Facebook. According to a study of click analysis and ad impressions on Facebook ads, male users are an easier audience.

Men click at a rate of 60 percent and have an impression volume of 58 percent. Women, meanwhile, maintain a click rate of 40 percent with 42 percent impression volume.

It gets back to how members of each gender group use the network. Females use the service to maintain relationships. Males are looking to make new relationships. In the latter mindset, men are scanning for any attention-grabbing signals, including relevant and persuasive ads.

It would seem, then, that men are a more sure thing when it come to advertising on Facebook. But before you break out talk of beer and boobs, consider that a sociocultural demographic shift has occurred:

“While sophomoric humor, high-testosterone content and advertising stocked with brew, babes and fast cars are still very much with us, marketers, as anyone paying attention has noticed, have also been speaking to men in another, much different voice lately.

“’Definitely what has happened is men are becoming numb to those traditional approaches,’ says Derrick Daye, managing partner at brand consultancy The Blake Project and author of blog Branding Strategy Insider.”

A more subtle approach is in order. Or, if the low brow road is taken, it should probably be done with enough obvious irony to be accepted by the sophisticated palate. Either way, today men buck stereotypes of older generations, stepping up to a raised bar of the modern era where they shop and cook and get dressed up with panache.

Men are Big Spenders

Part of the social shift at play can be seen in household gender roles, where married men are reported by both sexes to be very involved in shopping for the home. And for the first time in in five years, menswear sales are expected to spike and grow over the next decade.

The change in shopping habits may be traced back to the relative ease of online, tablet and mobile shopping. This translates into online research and comparison shopping, with 72 percent of men checking prices online before making a purchase, and 56 percent of men reading product reviews online, according to the Marketing to Men survey results.

So yes, guys are both cheap and have expensive taste at the same time. Their attention can be caught on their online hangout spots, like Facebook. They’re avid shoppers who do their homework. Sure, this comes as nothing new, but it’s good to remember in light of new research. :)

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.