Economic finding · relates to Pink

A digital advertising pink tax reaches women at higher cost

The finding

Cited claim

Mehrjoo, Cuevas, and Cuevas (2024) analyzed more than 4.5 million Facebook ad audiences across 187 countries and found a digital advertising pink tax: advertisers pay more to reach women than men in 79 percent of audiences worldwide and 98 percent in highly developed countries, with a median premium of about 30 percent. The gendered cost of attention follows the gendered cost of products into the online ad market.

Why it is in the collection

Significance

Extends the pink-economy evidence from shelf prices to advertising costs, showing the gendered premium is structural and not confined to one market.

Evidence type

How we know

Grade A. Large-scale computational study, peer-reviewed, open access.

Source

1 reference

Mehrjoo, A., Cuevas, R., & Cuevas, A. (2024). Online advertisement in a pink-colored market. EPJ Data Science 13, Article 36. peer reviewed
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-024-00473-2

Cite this case record

Stable ID GCMD-C10

Chen, Chloe. “A digital advertising pink tax reaches women at higher cost.” Record GCMD-C10, Global Color Meaning Database (Suse), 2026. Accessed [date]. https://globalcolormeaning.org/entries/gcmd-c10.html.

The identifier GCMD-C10 is permanent: it does not change if the record text is revised. For an empirical number, also cite the underlying study listed below. See the how-to-cite page for full guidance.