For advertisers targeting women, this is a new golden age.
Earlier this week, over 12 million viewers tuned in to witness an electrifying Elite Eight showdown between the University of Iowa and Louisiana State University, showcasing powerhouse players Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. It marked the second-largest audience for any basketball game, college or professional. Today’s final game between Iowa and the University of South Carolina is poised to set new records for viewership and engagement.
Women’s Events are Drawing Larger Audiences
Basketball isn’t the only arena where female athletes are captivating wider audiences. In 2023, more than 2 billion viewers tuned in to witness Spain triumph over England in the Women’s World Cup Final. Serena Williams’ final match of her illustrious career against Ajla Tomljanovic in 2022 became the highest-rated ESPN tennis telecast on record and the most-viewed broadcast of the day across both broadcast and cable networks.
2022 marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a landmark regulation mandating equitable opportunities for women and men in sports participation. In recent years, media rights for women’s sports have surged, driven by a growing number of platforms and new market entrants. Streaming services are amplifying media rights’ value, intensifying competition and reshaping traditional distribution models. These developments are anticipated to propel women’s sports into a billion-dollar industry. This surge of interest stems from decades of policy changes, increased female labor force participation, and rapid media innovation.
An Overlooked Market Opportunity for Advertisers
If the opportunity of the women’s markets is a massive boulder getting ready to avalanche down a hill, advertisers are the onlookers at the base attempting to brace themselves for impact. “Women have always been a deeply underestimated economic force,” said Blair Kohan, a partner and agent at talent agency UTA. CreativeX’s 2023 Gender in Advertising Report highlighted that in 2022, men were cast in professional roles 73% more often than women compared to the previous year and 30% more often in leadership roles. Additionally, women were cast 46% more often in domestic roles. These trends were exacerbated when age and race were factored in: only 6.8% of spending went to ads featuring women with darker skin tones.
Women are propelling a greater share of spending than ever before. In spite of this, systemic challenges endure, and companies continue missing out an opportunity tap into this massive potential. Some estimates place the economic cost of excluding women at close to $800 billion. This gap persists at all levels of the competitive landscape, with women-led startups receiving a mere 2.3% of all venture capital funding in 2020.
How Consumer Brands are Capitalizing on the Women’s Market
The disparity between opportunity and realization has never been more pronounced in the women’s market. A wave of direct-to-consumer brands is seizing the gap left by larger companies, targeting demographic segments once deemed unprofitable. No industry exemplifies this better than feminine hygiene.
Increasing consumer awareness of menstrual hygiene and rising incomes are driving global growth in this category. Retailers are responding by emphasizing organic, biodegradable products to meet consumer concerns about both environmental and personal well-being. Rif Care, a BIPOC women-owned feminine care brand created to provide reliable, carbon-neutral period products is one company that is trying to make its mark in disrupting this $40 billion industry.
Childhood best friends and Los Angeles Natives Val Emanuel and Rebecca Caputo co-founded Rif Care in 2022. Emanuel, the entrepreneur behind ethical talent agency Role Models Management, and Caputo, a scientist and biologist, founded Rif (which stands for Regenerative International Female) out of their shared passion for making an impact and after their own reproductive health struggles. Rif Care’s product line focuses on sustainability and includes plant-based organic menstrual pads, made with organically grown hemp fiber and organic cotton. The pads are also packaged in 100% biodegradable, plant-based back sheets and wrappers.
Emanuel and Caputo leveraged data to build conviction and strategize market positioning. “We can easily show that period care is not only growing as a category every year, but certain categories like reusable period underwear are growing at a rate that would be hard to ignore from retail shelf space or investor perspective,” explains Emanuel. “As a founder, I no longer have to guess what data matters in my conversations with retailers and investors. I can now use real life data that updates weekly with sales information to strengthen my company’s value propositions, and this data also helps us know how to move within all of our meetings.”
Rif’s growth has not gone unnoticed. The brand has recently added supermodel Ashley Graham on as a brand ambassador and spokesperson after winning season one of the reality show “Side Hustlers” on ROKU. This reflects a growing interest from investors into the ever-growing consumer packaged goods (CPG) category. This segment has historically either been viewed unfavorably or mismanaged by investors. Early stage tech-focused investors tended to over-hype exit outcomes, while later stage private equity funds preferred to exert control, often crushing the creativity that can give brands the unique edge needed to resonate with customers.
The growth in e-commerce has opened up pathways for more creative investors to support companies for long-term stable success, and brands are increasingly leveraging tools like AI to more precisely segment and target consumers. Funds such as Willow Growth Partners and Springdale Ventures have stepped in to fill the funding void, backing founding teams building category-defining brands, which are often being built by women.
How Fintech Can Bridge the E-Commerce Gap
While e-commerce has been boldly powering consumer products for the better part of the last two decades, fintech has been the steady tiller navigating the open sea of opportunity. Innovations in payment processing have made it easier and faster than ever for e-commerce businesses to verify and accept customers from consumers all over the globe. Tasks related to inventory planning, financial forecasting, and working capital management have been simplified, reducing the barriers to entry for individuals seeking to bring their products to the mass market. Companies like Tandym merge the benefits of payment processing with rewards programs to develop and nurture greater customer loyalty.
Fintechs too have a unique opportunity to cater to the female market. According to the IFC, “previous evidence has demonstrated that women are an attractive segment … due to their higher loyalty, higher lifetime value, and lower default risk compared to men.” Furthermore, “fintech firms customizing their products and services for women more often observe a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) among women.” Their findings show that among fintech firms who do cater their products and services for women, 63% stated that women’s LTV was higher than men’s.
Fintechs have a unique opportunity to cater to this market. Lending, savings, and insurance products are a few categories where fintechs can utilize differentiated insights to better design products that appeal to women. Knowledge, research, and technical assistance are critical components in effectively tapping this market. Research on use cases and pain points, in particular, continues to be a significant need.
While technology and consumer brands continue to keep pace with the growing demand that women continue to drive, the athletes of March Madness will dazzle us one last time with their superior athleticism and technical prowess. As their run comes to an end, one thing has never been more clear: the ball is in the women’s court.