The Invisible Majority
Nearly half of UK adults are 50 or over. Only 12% of UK ads put someone from that group in a leading role. Playful Media exists to close that gap.
75%+ of UK household wealth sits with the over-50s, worth £320bn a year in spending power.
Only 12% of UK ads put someone from that group in a leading role.
78% feel under-represented by advertising, and 49% say they actively avoid brands that ignore them.
Source: Marketing Week; Gransnet/Mumsnet advertiser research; Centre for Ageing Better; industry press.
Poor-quality advertising isn't inevitable for this audience.
It's the result of three habits: buying 45+ media as an afterthought, reaching for tired creative shorthand instead of insight, and measuring success by the wrong benchmarks. Each is fixable, and fixing them will deliver better ROI.
Media buying gets it wrong
45+ audiences are rarely bought specifically, except for niche products. As a result there's rarely a tailored creative and media strategy, and if the two aren't working together, the results won't be optimised either.
Creative that reaches for the trope
Tired shorthand, humour at the audience's expense. Creative built on what's easiest to storyboard, not on what the research actually shows.
Measuring success by the wrong benchmarks
Campaigns built for this audience get judged against benchmarks built for a different one, so what's actually working gets missed, and budget gets pulled from it.
45+ isn't one audience.
There is more variance within the 45+ bracket than between other adjacent age groups. Treating a 46 year old and a 90 year old as the same buyer makes no sense.
Four decades of life stage collapsed into a single media buy isn't efficient targeting; it's a guess, and the people on the receiving end can tell.
Career peak
Often supporting multiple generations. Digitally fluent; with high expectations from brands.
New retirement
But still far from disengaged. Spending shifts toward value and experience.
Established retirement
Media habits are set but not static. Audio and TV remain core; digital adoption is selective, not absent.
Later life
The smallest and most overlooked segment; needs and media habits diverge sharply from a 65 year old, yet routinely bucketed with them.
FOUR LIFE STAGES, ONE MEDIA BUY — THAT'S THE GAP
The cliché — this is not the audience being pictured
- Retired, slowing down, spending less
- One life stage: married, kids gone, coasting to retirement
- Confused by social media and new tech
- Advertised to with beige, gentle, low-energy creative
The reality
- The highest disposable income of any age group
- Solo, blended, remarried, co-parenting, child-free — this group is not homogeneous
- Fast-growing on TikTok and Instagram, and still advertising's biggest radio audience
- Training for first triathlons, changing careers, starting companies; life doesn't freeze at 45
Lean too hard into "45+" as a single label, though, and the proposition risks being dismissed as niche, reinforcing the very stereotype it's built to dismantle. The detail above is the point.
The numbers behind the opportunity.
Source: Marketing Week; Gransnet/Mumsnet advertiser research; Centre for Ageing Better; industry press.
That's not a rounding error. That's millions of people quietly deciding a brand isn't for them, the moment an ad tells them so.
Playful Media exists to close that gap.
We build the research, creative standards and media strategy that make 45+ advertising work, proven through an audit and a creative exploration before you commit to a full campaign.
A quick word from Fiona.
"Twenty years of buying media at scale taught me the same lesson again and again: brands dismiss this audience on the assumption that it's expensive to reach. But this is because they've never targeted it properly, with creative built for it. Fix that mismatch, and the return of investment is delivered. That's the bet Playful Media is built on."— Fiona Glen, PhD, Founder Meet the team →