How Often Is Sex Used in Advertising?
Research looks at how sex sells across the decades
You don’t have to look far to see evidence that sex is regularly used in advertising. That much is clear: From cars to burgers to clothes to perfume, sex has been used to sell a wide spectrum of products for decades.
But just how often is sex actually used in advertising?
In order to find out, researcher Tom Reichert studied sexual imagery — which was measured based on how much clothing models were wearing and the amount of contact made between models — used in 3,232 full-page advertisements published in well-known magazines in 1983, 1993, and 2003. After reviewing the ads — which were featured in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek, and Time — he found that overall 20 percent of them featured sexual imagery. In addition, his evaluation revealed that in 2003, ads using sexual imagery jumped to 27 percent from the 15 percent found in 1983.
“It takes more explicitness to grab our attention and arouse us than before.”
Reichert attributed this increase to a few factors, one of which being the activities of the specific industries that tend to rely on sexuality in their advertising.
