The voiceover of the video plays no less important role than the development of the creative or the filming. It is not for nothing that any video content is considered an “audiovisual work”, and the best announcers are paid on a par with professional actors. Finding out which voice is better for voice acting in advertising videos: male or female? Does the speaker's gender affect the credibility of the ad and brand? How does it affect sales? Announcing the Battle of the Sexes in Video Ads!

Does the gender of the announcer affect sales?

Spoiler alert: most often not, but it depends on the product and niche. 

According to American research , advertisements for products for men and non-gender products work equally well with both female and male voiceovers. In advertising food, smartphones or travel, the gender of the announcer is not important. The customer can safely focus on his inner feelings and not think about how this will affect the conversion. 

Conclusion : products for women should be advertised by female speakers. In other cases, the gender of the speaker does not affect the effectiveness of the advertisement.

IMPORTANT: There is one exception to this rule. It makes sense to go against the accepted norm if you want to break the gender stereotype. For example, you want to increase the profit of a beauty salon and convince men to come for a manicure. Here it makes sense to sound the advertisement in a male voice, and play up the creative with humor. 

For example, in the presentation of a company engaged in complex real estate services, it was important to show the care of the house and convey to the viewer the value of solving economic and technical issues on a turnkey basis, so we chose a well-known female voice: 

But during the presentation of the Federal Budgetary Institution "Register of Certification on Federal Railway Transport" it was important to assure the viewer of the reliability of the organization, so the choice fell on the solid voice of Sergei Chonishvili:

Trust issue

A small study from the University of Glasgow found that a high, gentle voice helps the audience absorb information better than a low voice. It follows that the female voice is more trustworthy. 

What is especially interesting is that we recently conducted a similar experiment ourselves. It so happened that on an advertising project for the Mushroom Rainbow brand we recorded two voices at once - Vladimir Eremin (the voice of Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Anthony Hopkins and others) and Olga Zubkova (Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett, Charlize Theron and others) :

Bottom line : until the very end of the vote, it was not clear who would win - both announcers went head-to-head. After two weeks of polling, Olga Zubkova won with a slight advantage. The Media Alo version with her was launched into rotation on TV. The results confirmed the correctness of the choice of the Client's speaker and our producer. 

Moreover, the opinions of the respondents were completely opposite: 

The female voice is more associated with rainbow and freshness - "Mother Nature". 

The female voice is associated with the image of a mother, a healer, a gatherer, and archetypes still play an important role in the viewer's subconscious. 

The male voice is more reminiscent of a “mushroom picker”, and the low timbre inspires confidence in the “experienced mushroom picker”. 

The male voice is more immersed in the mushroom "fairy tale", and even adults believe in fairy tales. 

By the way, in the same British study, it is said that the best results were shown by ads in which the female announcer lowered her voice at the end of the phrase.

Tone is more important than gender 

What is the unanimous agreement between researchers and practicing announcers? It is not the gender of the speaker that matters, but the type of voice and presentation!

Serious or funny?

Young or mature?

Assertive or Relaxed?

Professional or friendly?

It is these factors that need to be given the utmost attention! It is on them that the audience's response to advertising largely depends. And a professional announcer of any gender or a director with a producer in charge of video advertising will be able to choose the most appropriate tone. 

Yuri Brezhnev - the voice of Dwayne Johnson ("The Rock"), spoke very well about the correct presentation of the text and the target audience of the voice acting, we recommend: