by Paul Bell, CRO, 33 Across

American household wealth just crossed $181.6 trillion in net worth, a celebratory sum, even though that wealth continues to be unequally distributed. In fact, American wealth inequality has increased to its largest gap in over 30 years. 

For brands, that complexity creates a real challenge. Wealth is concentrating, diversifying, and changing hands in ways that traditional consumer targeting was never built to track.

For most of advertising’s existence, household income was the north star for targeting. The simple logic: people earning a lot of money were likely to spend it, or at least had the means to do so.

But newer trends are challenging that assumption. There are an increasing number of ways people can make and retain money besides a full-time salaried job, making household income a less powerful signal on its own.

Consumers also signal wealth through behavior. They engage with luxury and investment content on social, research niche financial topics, and show interest in education and asset-building content. Those behavioral signals paint a fuller picture than a salary bracket ever could.

Today, advertisers have access to many more wealth signals beyond salary to determine which audiences are most valuable.

Here’s an example: two 35-year-olds living in the same zip code that share roughly the same interests making the same salaries likely will show up in the same targeting budgets under traditional models. 

But looking more closely, one may have inherited $500,000 from a grandparent, and the other could be drowning in $150,000 of student debt. Even if they have the same annual income, they are miles apart when it comes to purchasing power.  

An ability to pay becomes the strongest marketing symbol. Yet many advertisers are running the same customer targeting playbook of demographics and psychographics. The reality is age and gender are no match for purchasing power in an era of great uncertainty. 

By missing the only signal that actually predicts purchasing behavior in today’s economy, a household’s real ability to pay, advertisers are wasting spend and missing the audiences that can really move the needle. 

Failure to adapt strategy means chasing volume in segments with no capacity to buy while underinvesting in households that could become high-value clients tomorrow.

As assets pile up at the top and purchasing power erodes in the middle, the ability to pay will define targeting across every category, and marketers who adopt wealth signals early will outperform the rest.

The wealth transfer to come

Right now, money is an older person game: 73% of U.S. wealth sits in households over 55. But that is temporary: financial analysts project that Baby Boomers alone will transfer tens of trillions of dollars in assets through inheritances and estate planning, making this the largest generational shift in wealth history.

Some predict $124 trillion will change hands over the next two decades, representing the largest economic shift.  Fifty-five percent of Millennials and 60% of Gen Z expect to receive an inheritance in the next five years. 

Every dollar of that transfer creates marketing opportunities: estate planning for the givers, investment management for the inheritors, tax planning for everyone caught in between. But only if you can identify who’s actually involved in these transactions before your competition does.

Inheritors are “pre-wealthy,” making financial decisions based on anticipated liquidity that won’t show up in current income data.

These households are already shopping for wealth management, luxury goods, and estate planning services, but they’re invisible to income-based models. Reaching them early means locking in client relationships before the assets actually land while building a lucrative long-term strategy.

Wealth signals in action

At its simplest, focusing on wealth-segmented filters enables brands to adjust spend across advertising channels, offering more ROI than generic demographic profiles.

For example, leading auto brands are using signals that include total taxable income like capital gains, not just “W2”. Having visibility into a true ability to pay and interest and intent yields the rarified combo of capacity and readiness to buy.

A luxury travel company can make smarter decisions about which households can afford $20,000 vacations by using premium inventory and private marketplaces to let buyers layer wealth signals into PMP deals. Matching and often exceeding stand-alone endemic content with a high propensity to convert to those specific audiences.

By curating premium inventory for verified high-net-worth segments, they can reduce wasted impressions while increasing booking values across their entire portfolio.

Credit card issuers and banks can often employ the most sophisticated approach, using dynamic creative optimization to match offers in real-time. By aligning creative to custom PMPs based on predicted interest and intent, a financial services company can tailor incentives and promotional creative to price-sensitive households or aspirational premium bundles.

Using wealth data goes far beyond targeting. Companies targeting this audience can integrate it across their entire marketing operation, from planning and activation to measurement and optimization. 

The Competitive Advantage Window

Marketers ready to move beyond demographic assumptions and integrate these signals throughout the entire buying process will enhance ROI and ride the wave of the next great marketing signal. 

The performance gaps are becoming impossible to ignore. Wealth-aware campaigns will consistently outperform demographic-dependent ones by significant margins.

This creates a sustainable competitive advantage that transcends traditional vertical limitations. When your media strategy reflects economic reality rather than demographic assumptions, every dollar works harder. Every campaign performs better. Every customer lifetime value calculation becomes more accurate.

Those who shift their attention to the right audiences have the opportunity to capture a share of the most significant economic opportunity in a generation.

Author: Paul Bell is the President at 33Across, a technology company that applies machine learning and addressability to segment data and activate campaigns across digital channels. In his role, he is responsible for driving the company’s growth and market strategy while overseeing the data and identity business. Paul joined 33Across as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) in 2015, and has over 20 years of extensive experience in data and digital media.