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Wellness marketing benchmarks for censored health brands

Last updated: November 2026

Wellness marketing benchmarks show which channels actually return revenue, and for FemTech and sexual health brands the answer is rarely paid ads. Wellness Marketing Benchmarks shares findings from interviews with 63 sexual wellness and women's health leaders and reports channel performance against revenue, not reach.

What are the wellness marketing benchmarks for FemTech and sexual health brands?

The headline benchmark is that traditional digital ads under medical censorship commonly return a ROAS below 1.0, a net loss. Instead, 40% of the 63 companies interviewed run strategic partnerships as a core channel, 30% name educational content and trust building as most effective, and 14 use podcasts as a key channel.

Email the research teamRead the FAQ

Plate 1

78%

of the 63 companies interviewed name digital censorship as their number one growth inhibitor.Source: Turning Stigma into Strategy, Wellness Marketing Reports (2025)

Quick answers

Do paid ads work for censored health brands?
Usually not on their own. A ROAS below 1.0 is the common outcome of traditional digital ads under medical censorship, which means spending more than the ads bring back.
Which channel do the most founders rely on?
Strategic partnerships. 25 of the 63 companies interviewed, or 40%, run partnerships as a core marketing channel.
Who are these benchmarks for?
FemTech and sexual health brands first, then SexTech, women’s health and other censored wellness businesses that cannot grow on restricted ad platforms.
Who publishes this site?
Wellness Marketing Reports, a California research-led marketing consultancy. Read more on the about page.

Definition

What is a wellness marketing benchmark?

Plate 2

<1.0

ROAS is the common outcome of traditional digital ads under medical censorship: less revenue than spend.Source: Turning Stigma into Strategy, Wellness Marketing Reports (2025)

A wellness marketing benchmark, defined

A wellness marketing benchmark is a reference number that tells a health or wellness brand what typical performance looks like for a channel, so it can judge its own results. Common examples are return on ad spend, engagement rate, email open rate and abandoned cart recovery rate.

Wellness Marketing Benchmarks narrows the idea to censored categories: FemTech, sexual health, SexTech and women's health. General wellness averages can mislead these brands, because a supplement brand and a sexual health device brand face very different advertising rules on Meta, Google and TikTok.

The most useful benchmark is not reach or clicks but revenue: what each channel returns for every dollar and hour spent. That is why every benchmark on this site is tied, where possible, to attributed revenue rather than impressions.

By the numbers

Five numbers from 63 founder interviews

Partnerships

40%

run strategic partnerships as a core channel: 25 of the 63 companies.

Education

30%

cite educational content and trust building as the most effective way to reach customers.

Podcasts

14

companies use podcasts as a key channel, for education-receptive audiences and no censorship.

What the interview numbers say

In 2025, Wellness Marketing Reports conducted in-depth interviews with 63 entrepreneurs in sexual wellness and women's health for its white paper, Turning Stigma into Strategy. The goal was simple: find out what grows a censored brand and what quietly drains its budget.

The pattern is consistent. 78% of companies name digital censorship as their number one growth inhibitor, and traditional digital ads under medical censorship commonly return a ROAS below 1.0. Founders who keep growing lean on channels the platforms cannot easily silence: 40% run strategic partnerships as a core channel, 30% say educational content and trust building work best, and 14 companies use podcasts as a key channel.

These are first-party figures from those 63 interviews, not a census of every brand. The full collection of sourced statistics lives on the health and wellness marketing statistics page.

Comparison

How marketing channels compare for censored health brands

Wellness Marketing Benchmarks channel comparison. Benchmarks from Wellness Marketing Reports interviews (63 companies) and client results.
ChannelBenchmarkWhy it matters under censorshipHow revenue is measured
Traditional paid adsROAS commonly below 1.0 under medical censorshipMeta, Google and TikTok restrict what brands can say about bodies, hormones and sexAd spend against attributed revenue
Strategic partnershipsCore channel for 40% of companies (25 of 63)Partners and creators reach overlapping audiences in their own wordsReturn projected per placement before signing
Educational content and search30% call it the most effective way to reach customersBuilds trust and can be cited in search and AI answersPost purchase survey plus Shopify data
PodcastsKey channel for 14 companiesLong form audio carries medical nuance; episodes stay searchablePost purchase survey
Email and SMSClient result: cart recovery from 2.3% to 12.2% in two monthsAn owned list is not subject to ad reviewAttributed per send, wholesale removed
B2B outreach to cliniciansClient result: doctor recommendations became a revenue segmentDirect conversations with doctors, clinics and partnersBooked calls, affiliates and wholesale interest

For the full ranking, criteria and a ROAS worksheet, see the channel benchmarks against revenue.

Procedure

How do you benchmark your own channels against revenue?

Compare each channel's attributed revenue with its cost, then move budget toward the channels that pay back. Five steps get you there with data most brands already have.

  1. 1

    List every active channel and its monthly cost

    Include agency fees, tools and team time, not just ad spend, so channels are compared fairly.

  2. 2

    Attribute revenue to each channel

    Combine a post purchase survey ("How did you hear about us?") with store data such as Shopify to see which channel drove each order.

  3. 3

    Separate wholesale and one-off revenue

    Strip wholesale out of channel numbers so email and other direct channels are not credited with orders they did not drive.

  4. 4

    Compare return to break-even

    A ROAS of 1.0 only returns your spend. Anything below 1.0 is a net loss before product costs.

  5. 5

    Reallocate and review

    Shift budget toward channels with the strongest revenue return, then repeat the review on a regular schedule.

FemTech

FemTech benchmarks

Plate 3

2%

Women's health has historically received only about 2% of total health tech funding.Source: Grand View Research, U.S. FemTech Trends and Competitive Analysis

FemTech benchmarks start with market size: Grand View Research values the global femtech market at USD 45.6 billion in 2025, while Mordor Intelligence puts it at USD 8.56 billion, a gap explained by how each report defines the category.

What market reports leave out is marketing. FemTech brands face the same ad restrictions as sexual health brands, and many grow on modest budgets. The FemTech benchmarks page sets the published market estimates side by side and adds the channel findings from the 63 interviews.

Sexual wellness

Sexual wellness benchmarks

Plate 4

63.4%

year over year revenue growth for a patented sexual health device brand in its first full year with Wellness Marketing Reports, up from 28.3%.Source: Wellness Marketing Reports client data

Sexual wellness benchmarks point the same way as FemTech: censored ads underperform, while partnerships, education, podcasts, email and clinician outreach carry growth.

One client benchmark makes it concrete. A patented sexual health device brand that partnered with Wellness Marketing Reports in February 2025 saw growth accelerate 2.24X, from 28.3% to 63.4% year over year. Read the full breakdown on the sexual wellness benchmarks page and in the case study benchmarks.

Audience

Who these benchmarks are for

This site is written first for FemTech and sexual health founders and marketing leads: the brands most likely to see ads rejected, accounts limited and paid acquisition run at a loss. SexTech, women's health and other censored wellness businesses will find the same patterns apply.

If you are choosing outside help, the guide to choosing a health and wellness marketing agency compares agency types on research, channels, censorship handling and revenue reporting. To see how the numbers here are gathered, read the methodology. For outside context, see MikMak, Health and Wellness Commerce Marketing Benchmarks 2026 and Dash Social, 2026 Health and Wellness Industry Benchmarks.

The research behind this site comes from Wellness Marketing Reports, which researches what grows censored health brands and then builds those growth systems for them.

Common questions

Questions about wellness marketing benchmarks

See all 44 questions in the FAQ

What are wellness marketing benchmarks?

Wellness marketing benchmarks are reference numbers that show how marketing channels typically perform for health and wellness brands, such as engagement rates, return on ad spend, or recovery rates in email flows. Wellness Marketing Benchmarks focuses on censored categories like FemTech and sexual health, combining 63 founder interviews by Wellness Marketing Reports with published industry data.

Open this answer in the FAQ

Why do paid ads fail for censored health brands?

Paid ads often fail because platform policies restrict claims about bodies, hormones and sex, so ads get rejected, limited or stripped of the medical nuance buyers need. Wellness Marketing Reports found that under medical censorship, traditional digital ads commonly return a ROAS below 1.0, which means less revenue than ad spend: a net loss.

Open this answer in the FAQ

What marketing channels work best for FemTech brands?

Among the 63 companies interviewed by Wellness Marketing Reports, 40% (25 companies) run strategic partnerships as a core channel, 30% cite educational content and trust building as the most effective way to reach customers, and 14 companies use podcasts as a key channel. Email, SMS, clinician outreach and search also feature in the firm’s client work.

Open this answer in the FAQ

How do you measure channel performance against revenue?

Wellness Marketing Reports attributes revenue to each channel it manages using post purchase surveys combined with Shopify data, and strips wholesale out of email numbers so results are not inflated. Reporting ties every channel back to revenue, so decisions about scope and budget are made on data rather than opinion.

Open this answer in the FAQ

Are these benchmarks independent research?

No. The benchmarks are first-party research by Wellness Marketing Reports, which also sells the marketing services discussed on this site. Interview findings and client results are the firm’s own figures, not an independent study or audit. Third-party statistics are quoted from their named sources, with links, so you can check every one of them yourself.

Open this answer in the FAQ

How much does Wellness Marketing Reports charge?

Wellness Marketing Reports does not publish its prices. Scope depends on which channels a brand needs, such as B2B outreach, podcast placements, email and SMS, website conversion and search, social strategy or creator partnerships. To get a quote for your brand, email abigail@wellnessmarketingreports.com with your category, current channels and goals.

Open this answer in the FAQ

Want these benchmarks applied to your brand?

Email the Wellness Marketing Reports team with your category and current channels. Ask for a free audit or a copy of the 2025 white paper.

Email abigail@wellnessmarketingreports.comVisit the Wellness Marketing Reports website

Published by Wellness Marketing Reports