Previously, by February, LGBTQ media and influencers would have been setting up marketing campaigns for Pride month. In recent years, this planning was postponed by a month or two, since the immediacy of digital marketing allows for quicker activation.
In 2025, however, the outreach never came.
LGBTQ media often operates in the red for much of the year but generates a wave of revenue during Pride month in June.
But this year, the usual brand sponsors are navigating a macroeconomic downturn and public blowback against LGBTQ-focused marketing by the current administration. That’s led more and more companies to eschew their Pride month strategies.
“I’m calling this year ‘the year without Pride,’” Todd Evans, president and CEO of LGBTQ media company Rivendell Media, told AdExchanger.
All quiet on the rainbow front
Pride advertising this year has undoubtedly been quieter than usual.
Many brands still spend the same amount as in previous Junes – but without the Pride branding this time, Jeff Hastedt, co-founder and managing director of programmatic provider Brkthru, told AdExchanger.
Most notably, Target and Anheuser-Busch each eliminated its Pride marketing after facing backlash in recent years.
Publishers that don’t specifically target the LGBTQ community are still seeing their “standard ad buy,” said Hastedt, so they aren’t hurting as much. But LGBTQ publishers must hurriedly seek out new revenue streams, such as local advertising or grants.
Many LGBTQ publishers “are doing direct fundraising with their readers,” Evans said, which he has “never seen before.”
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A lot of the pullback comes from a fear of what the current administration can do to LGBTQ-friendly brands, said Evans. Even the most powerful corporations, like Apple and Meta, are trying to court the US administration, not draw Trump’s ire.
And with all of the administration’s threats toward companies with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, many brands don’t want to be viewed as marketing their own such initiatives. Although DEI and market segmentation are two entirely different things, corporations tend to confuse them, Evans said.
DEI is a corporate policy “to show their employees that they have equal opportunity at that company,” he said, whereas market segmentation is for “looking at consumer groups and seeing who’s good for you.”
Without market segmentation, brands “have no power and no way to grow,” Evans said, but they’re concerned about the optics of DEI and targeting minority groups.
For instance, even brands that are standing their moral ground, so to speak, are still not all in on Pride month this year, Evans said. He asked several brands if he could refer to their Pride marketing strategies on the record, and all of them declined.
In the past, Miller Brewing Company has actually reached out to Evans to request that he stop referring to it as a case study on successful LGBTQ marketing, because it only wanted to be associated with LGBTQ media when it was running a specifically targeted campaign or advertising in an LGBTQ publication.
Even the “champions” who are “steering the course” of LGBTQ advertising are reluctant to discuss those marketing strategies, he said. “I’m disappointed.”
Pride, not prejudice
Advertisers may come to regret their reticence to back Pride.
Ironically, many brands pulling ad dollars from Pride and refusing to publicly voice LGBTQ support are hurting themselves. They’re “trying to satisfy” a group that isn’t actually their customer base, and “now the people that they’ve annoyed are actually their customers,” Hastedt pointed out.
In trying to please everyone, they please no one.
There’s nothing wrong with catering to multiple audiences, Hastedt emphasized, using Levi’s denim as an example. Levi’s has doubled down on its LGBTQ marketing over the past few years as it targets younger Gen Z audiences. But it would also make sense for them to sponsor a rodeo, he said, to target their more conservative following.
The problem is that many brands are abandoning their LGBTQ audiences altogether.
“It’s an unnecessary uphill battle,” he said. The LGBTQ community isn’t going to accept a check and an apologetic Instagram post and call it a day. They’re going to have to truly “reengage” with the community.
And it’s not going to be easy, Hastedt warned. “You can’t do it overnight.”
Evans agreed, noting that the Target by his workplace is now “a shadow of itself” ever since the store made headlines for pulling its Pride collection off shelves in response to conservative backlash.
“There’s a real price to be paid,” he said, “for being a fake friend.”
