Health and Wellness Brands Can Turn Identity Into Intent with Premium Content

Most health and wellness advertising is aimed at someone who’s already in the funnel, whether they’re actively searching for a protein powder or have already clicked an ad for a fitness app that matched their health goals. That’s a sensible place to be. But there’s a version of this consumer who’s even more valuable (and harder to reach through other channels) because their next purchase decision starts before they ever type a question into Google.

Health and wellness is a category where brand relationships form before the shopping begins, because what they choose to buy is hyper-personal decision. According to McKinsey’s Future of Wellness research, around 50% of U.S. gym-goers now consider fitness a core part of their identity; among Gen Z specifically, 56% consider fitness a “very high priority.” When someone buys a supplement or invests in recovery gear, it’s a purchase that, in essence, reinforces who they are. That connection between consumer identity, and the products they’re intent on buying, is the exact opportunity health and wellness brands can capitalize on with premium content.

The Behavior

The right question for health and wellness advertisers isn’t only “who is searching for my product right now?” It’s also “who is in the identity-building phase that puts them in market in the near future?” One of the more reliable ways to reach those consumers is through premium content that reflects the active, disciplined lifestyle they’re working toward.

The data on this spending cohort is striking. McKinsey’s Future of Wellness report found that 84% of U.S. consumers rate wellness as a “top” or “important” life priority, which can translate directly into spending. A Circana report on the cross-industry influence of wellness trends puts the buying power of U.S. health and wellness-focused consumers at $1.1 trillion, a figure that has held resilient even as spending in other categories softens. And NIQ’s global research found that 55% of consumers globally are willing to spend over $100 a month on nutrition, self-care, and physical and mental health, and the consumers most likely to hit that threshold are the ones watching content that reflects who they’re trying to become.

What that creates is a uniquely motivated audience that doesn’t need to be convinced that wellness should be a key component of their lives. The question for brands is where to reach them before a competitor does, and the answer is the same place they go to watch physical effort, discipline, and performance play out in real time: competition, lifestyle, and sports programming. Let’s dig in a little deeper to these types of content.

The Programming

Competition & Lifestyle Reality Shows

What it is: Competition and lifestyle reality shows (think Survivor, The Challenge, even Below Deck) that are built around watching people get pushed to their limits and forced to adapt or go home.

The viewer posture: Reality programming draws a notably stronger audience in the U.S. than it does elsewhere. Per Parrot Analytics’ Q2 2024 Global TV Demand Report, 19.8% of U.S. demand for series was for a reality show, the largest reality demand share of any market in that comparison. Survivor, specifically, remains a heavyweight within that, with the shows 46th season averaging 8.4 million multiplatform viewers across 35 days and finished as the #1 reality show on Paramount+ that year, according to a Paramount Press Express release. The most useful thing about this audience it’s their mindset. These viewers are watching people physically and mentally pushing themselves. It’s an aspirational viewing experience, where they’re rooting for the on-screen talent, sure, but they’re also projecting something they want for themselves.

Why it works: For brands in fitness equipment, supplements, active apparel, or recovery products, this is an audience already doing the mental work of imagining a more disciplined, physically capable version of themselves. The content and the purchase intent are telling the same story. These audiences are active-lifestyle consumers in the consideration phase, aware of their goals and watching content that reinforces the behaviors they want to adopt in their own lives.

Combat Sports 

What it is: High-stakes, physically intense fight and wrestling programming like UFC, TNA Wrestling, and PFL MMA that stays with you well after the final bell rings.

The viewer posture: The MMA and fight sports audience is one of the youngest in all of sports television. A Q1 2025 Kagan US Consumer Insights survey from S&P Global Market Intelligence found that UFC viewers are among the youngest of any major sport surveyed, with nearly half between 18 and 34 and 70% under 45. That is a far younger skew than NHL or NFL audiences in the same survey. MMA specifically has evolved into a fitness discipline in its own right, and per a UFC Gym press release, that brand is on track to open more than 45 new locations in 2025, pushing its global footprint toward 200 gyms. A separate GlobeNewswire release shows UFC Gym partnering with MMA.inc to roll out a co-branded training program across 150+ of those locations. The people watching UFC and PFL at home are the exact same people most likely to show up in those gyms after getting a taste of the action on their TVs.

Why it works: For brands in supplements, training equipment, apparel, and performance nutrition, the combat sports viewer wants to know what the fighters they respect are using, from their dietary regimen to recovery methods. A report from Astute Analytica found that fitness enthusiasts, now the largest consumer segment in the sports nutrition market, ahead of athletes, average $500 annually on supplements alone. This is advertising at the point of identity, not just contextual alignment in the abstract.

Premium Live Sports

What it is: Nationally and globally recognized sports leagues, like the NFL, NBA, MLB, English Premier League, and college sports, that have kept audiences locked in for decades.

The viewer posture: Live sports delivers something few content environments can match: scale and sustained attention at the same time. Live sports viewing is appointment viewing by definition; fans show up, stay through commercial breaks, and come back night after night across months-long seasons. The sports audience also skews strongly toward the demographic that wellness research identifies as the highest-spending cohort. As McKinsey’s Future of Wellness report shows, Gen Z and Millennials, despite making up about 36% of the U.S. adult population, drive more than 41% of annual wellness spending, and these are the generations most likely to be watching NBA tip-offs and EPL match days. The same report found that nearly 30% of younger consumers have increased their wellness spending over the past year, with their top priorities centered on sleep, health, and appearance, the exact territory where sports nutrition, supplements, fitness apps, and recovery brands compete. This is also a co-viewing context, with friends tuning in together, and families building rituals around the game schedule.

Why it works: Premium live sports offers broad reach across the specific demographic most actively spending on health and wellness, with the sustained attention and repeat exposure that builds the brand familiarity needed to convert consideration into purchase. For wellness brands with broad positioning (think hydration, protein, general fitness), this is where you build the base.

The Play

Health and wellness brands with campaign windows tied to peak intent seasons (January for New Year’s resolutions, spring for pre-summer fitness pushes, fall for back-to-routine momentum) should treat the months before those windows as high-value placement time. The identity-building phase precedes purchase intent, often by weeks or months as a viewer who spends a full season watching competitors push their physical limits on Survivor, or follows a training cycle alongside UFC fighters, is forming brand associations well before they search for a product. They may not be in market yet, but they’re envisioning a version of themselves that will be.

Used alongside a performance-driven campaign designed to capture in-market consumers, premium content can build the emotional association and brand recognition that makes an impression more likely to convert when the moment comes. Even if another performance channel is the final touchpoint, premium content is where the decision got its start.