The vast majority of gendered ads for GLP-1 drugs on Instagram target women, according to a study published in the Journal of Advertising.
Most (77.6%) of the ads analysed did not target a gender, but among those that did, 95.6% targeted women.
The researchers used Meta’s Ad Library to search for image and meme (but not video) ads on Instagram that contained the keywords ‘Semaglutide’ and ‘GLP-1’ in the US between 1 January and 1 November 2024.
Out of the resulting cache of 201 ads, 45 were deemed to have been gender targeted, and 43 of those were aimed at women. The study used independent coders to discern whether ads were targeted to a specific gender, either through the use of imagery or through text referring explicitly to women or to things like post-pregnancy weight gain.
But the authors of the study caution that, while their from Meta’s Ad Library is illustrative, it ‘is not exhaustive, and may not fully capture the breadth of messaging across different platforms or global contexts’.
Unravelling the Ozempic Craze: A Content and Thematic Analysis of Prescription Weight Loss Medication Advertisements on Meta was written by Minhey Chung, Erin Willis and Janelle Applequist, and published in the Journal of Advertising on 17 December.
