The following excerpts are from the Commercial Closet Association on Gay Marketing resources:
The gay market comprises a large and influential group of customers to a broad range of companies, across industry segments, across many countries around the globe. In the U.S. alone, the gay market is estimated to be worth $660 billion (2006) in disposable income. Approximately 4% to 10% of adult populations self-identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, meaning between 12 million and 28 million in the United States alone. Major ad categories include travel, financial services, alcoholic beverages, automotive, entertainment, hair and skincare, luxury goods, pharmaceuticals, and fashion.
Decades after invisibility and reaching critical mass, a breakthrough July 1991 article in the conservative Wall Street Journal called the lesbian and gay community “a dream market.” Today the American market is estimated to be valued at $660 billion, projected to reach $835 billion by 2011 –based primarily on U.S. population growth and steady 7% representation of gays and lesbians within the overall population.
The U.S. total population of gay- and lesbian-identified adults is expected to be roughly between 14 million and 16 million.
Gays are not all spring chickens. Witeck-Combs/Packaged Facts also estimates that 2 million gays are approaching or have already reached retirement age, and that by 2020, some 5.7 million, or 25 percent of the gay community, will be 50 or older.
The American census data for 2000, found 97% of counties nationwide contained same-sex couples. That translates to 594,000 same-sex couples across the U.S. (301,000 male couples, 293,000 female — totaling 1 in 9 of “all unmarried couples”), with at least one same-sex pairing in almost every county. Gay and lesbian couples are slightly better educated than married people, but they earn similar pay (not more), and aren’t as likely to own their homes.
A 2006 update to the 2000 Census from the American Community Survey found that the number of same-sex couples in the U.S. grew by more than 30% from 2000 to 2005, from nearly 600,000 pairs in 2000 to almost 777,000 in 2005.
In an analysis commissioned and released by the Human Rights Campaign, more than 35% of people living with same-sex partners had a college degree in 2000, compared with 28% of married people and 19% of opposite-sex unmarried partners.
Median wages earned by same-sex couples were equal to opposite-sex couples — about $32,000, or $8,000 more than for opposite-sex unmarried partners. About 64% of gay/lesbian couples owned their homes, compared with 78% of married partners and 41% of heterosexual unmarried couples.
Gays and lesbians are also significant small-business owners. The National Gay & Lesbian Chambers of Commerce conservatively estimates there are 800,000 to 1.4 million in the United States, though the organization thinks the number is larger. That number is based on the US Census and Small Business Administration data giving the total number of small businesses and then comparing it with the statistics based on self-identifying numbers of the LGBT community.
For more and more advertisers today, “gay” isn’t lavender, pink or rainbow colored — it’s green.
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