According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income now sits at $80,610 (2023), while Statistica estimates that just under 41% are expected to earn $100,000 or more in 2024. This income level, no longer confined to niche luxury markets, has now become a mainstream audience segment that most advertisers should actively consider in their marketing messaging.
However, brands aiming to connect with Americans earning over $100K must understand the most effective types of advertising among this audience. What themes and emotional responses are driving intent to purchase a brand’s product, or visit a brand in 2024? To find out, we investigated a database of nearly 9,000 unique ads across 1,531 brands competing in 124 categories.
Here are some findings brands should consider, that are discussed in this article:
- Lean into emotional connections: Themes like curiosity, convenience, humor, and cinematic and colorfully engaging visuals resonate strongly.
- Be sure to break through: While a variety of tactics can work, curiosity is often visually led.
- Take precautions: Characters, visuals – and humor – should support, rather than overshadow, the brand or product.
- Drive business: In both rational and emotional appeals, keep the product, brand, and/or its message integral to the narrative.
Curiosity and Humor Drove Positive Connections With the $100K+ Audience
For American viewers earning $100K or more, curiosity and humor were the emotions* most commonly reflected in viewer verbatim comments on each ad. Colorful, Cinematic (and sometimes Surreal) visual appeal, and Convenience were also common. In the broad set of ads we researched, 42% earned viewer response at least 15 percentage points ahead of the average category creative.
However, negative emotions were common, often due to a lack of clear brand linkage (eg. ‘Inappropriate’ response). The $100K+ audience also felt some content sparked ‘Dislike’/distrust, confusion (‘WTF’, ‘Incredulous’), or internal conflict (the ‘But’ emotion) where viewers liked part of the ad but found fault with other aspects. As a result, 39% of ads underperformed their category norm by a significant amount.
This audience showed stronger emotional reactions than the general population, but the rate of Heartfelt, Inspiring or Narrative-centric connections fell below 10% of ads across both samples year to date.
Curiosity Often sparked by Visuals, but Didn’t Ensure Brand Affinity
Twenty-six ads earned a perfect 10.0 score in evoking ‘Curiosity’, led by nine streaming service spots, five for video games, and four investment ads. While five Super Bowl 24 teasers made the list, a Big Game investment is not needed to engage this audience.
Higher income viewers found visuals to be the Single Best Thing (SBT) in nearly 80% of highly curious spots. For the remainder, ‘Curiosity’ was driven by characters or the product itself. Only 12% saw the product rated as the top SBT (23% of these spots saw the product, brand, or message in second place).
Despite piquing interest, many curiosity-driven ads struggled with likeability and purchase intent. In fact, only about half of the most curious ads were more likeable than average and less than a third drove above-norm intent for their respective categories.
State Street Investments’s ad “The Biggest Ideas: Electricity” engaged higher income viewers with its visuals and music. However, confusion around the brand’s connection to the message led to “WTF” being the second strongest emotional response behind Curiosity and unaided recall at just 15%. Similarly, only 36% of higher income viewers were more likely to consider the brand, falling short of the investment category’s 39% norm.
In contrast, Invesco’s 30-second ad “The Future Isn’t Scary: Car” developed strong breakthrough and Curiosity with Arresting visuals. Despite an appeal limited to higher income males, this creative sparked a positive intent rate of 46% against the category norm of 39%.
While ads can have diverse objectives, creative testing results can help advertisers identify and place additional support behind the ads with positive influence on purchase intent. Those showing less success could be evaluated for further targeting, edits, or success on other KPI’s (such as awareness, attention, etc.).
Humor Often Squandered by Weak Link to Product
Humor is tough to get right, and none of the ads analyzed were rated perfectly humorous by higher-income viewers. Sixteen spots, however, scored 8.0 or higher.
While Funny ads were more likeable to $100K+ viewers, humor alone didn’t guarantee purchase consideration. In fact, half of these ads achieved high Likeability but failed to drive increased purchase intent.
Six of the top sixteen humorous spots were Super Bowl LVIII content, so entertainment and/or brand awareness objectives took precedence over driving product preference Similarly, a focus on characters – over the product – led to lower intent for about 80% of the character-centric ads.
Brands targeting high-income earners must ensure a strong link between the product and the narrative (even if funny). To be funny for funny’s sake is risking a squandered sale.
Allstate’s 15-second “Bird” ad was an exception, as the instantly recognizable “Mayhem” is linked intrinsically to the brand. The ad’s twist made it highly memorable, and 42% of the $100K+ audience increased their consideration for Allstate—well above the other insurance norm of 36%.
Nathan’s Famous’ 30-second “Talking to a Hot Dog” ad relied heavily on characters, achieving excellent Breakthrough and Watchability. While memorability was very high, it lacked sufficient brand Information, resulting in lower consumer intent (49%) than its category average (55%).
17% of Ads Drove a Double-Digit Increased in Purchase Likelihood
iSpot’s purchase/visit intent metric offers key insights into creative effectiveness, gauging how ads immediately influence viewers’ intent. While advertisers aim to drive brand consideration, just over one-third of creatives in 2024 sparked above-norm consumer intent among the $100K+ audience. Only 17% led to a double-digit increase, and less than 0.1% of the database spurred impressive consideration gains of +30 to +35 pts over their category norm.
Ads with double-digit increases were more likely to evoke positive emotions on metrics like Convenience, Cinematography, Curiosity, and Color at a higher level, while minimizing negative-leaning reactions. The proportion of ads sparking laughter was consistent across both gen pop and $100K+ audiences, with one in four scoring as Funny.
The $100K+ audience indicated double-digit purchase intent for ads that focused more on the brand, product, and/or message than the database norm.
Top Ads Excelled with Clear Messaging, Brand and Product Focus
The $100K+ audience responded with very high (+30 points or more) intent to creatives with a clear message and those that kept the brand and/or product central. In fact, 40% of top performers saw one of these aspects rated the Single Best Thing – and nine in ten spots saw one of the three as secondarily influential to viewers. Emotional approaches varied, with three (AAA, Claritin and Fabletics) appealing in a strictly rational manner.
The takeaway is clear: to drive purchase intent, the brand or product must be the focal point of the ad, showcasing its benefits clearly. Ads that achieved this performed well across multiple KPIs, including Attention, Likeability, and Relevance.
Aleve’s 15-second “Ballet” ad related its product to a scene depicting the need for relief from joint pain. The ad’s delivery was Clear & Concise with the strongest emotion sparked reflecting a sense of authenticity. This ad stayed true to the brand’s promise while engaging with interesting visuals and relevance to spark purchase intent (67%) +30 pts above the pharmaceutical norm.
Common to the top set of creatives was an ability to draw the interest of the higher income audience, convey clarity on what they were advertising, and content that aligned well with the product(s).
As proven here, success with this audience is challenging but achievable. Advertisers can deploy their creativity while capitalizing on these trends when planning new creative, and test against these success pillars to ensure objectives and outcomes are soundly achieved.
Emotional Measurement Methodology:
To quantify emotions, Natural Language Processing and machine learning analysis is applied to tens of millions of comments. From there, ads are associated with nearly 60 emotions and reactions consumers have in response to the creative. Scores are relative to every other ad in the expansive database allowing for distinct comparisons to determine if a campaign is missing the mark, mildly successful, or hitting it out of the park on each emotional metric.