As we enter the season finale television season, advertisers will spend billions of dollars on marketing campaigns as they compete for Americans’ hard-earned disposable income. However, advertisers often fail to take into account a very large (and growing) market with expendable income: the childfree.

A Growing Demographic

Even without the popular (and controversial topic) of the childfree lifestyle highlighted in TIME, CNN, and the Huffington Post, the numbers are hard to ignore: approximately 1 in 5 American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s (Pew Research). A Yale study found that in western countries, the proportion of childlessness among women in their late 40s has doubled over the past three decades.

Twenty percent is not a small number, especially when compared to other traditionally marginalized groups. According to the most recent U.S. Census, women make up half of the U.S. population, putting childfree women at 10% of the population. In comparison, Hispanics make up 17.4% of the American population, African-Americans make up 13.2%, Asians make up 5.4%, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals comprise approximately 3.8% of the population.

Who are these childfree adults?

Long gone are the stereotypes of the traditional childfree women: the high-powered executive or the spinster with five cats- or the men: perpetual bachelors who spend their free time on yachts.

Childfree men and women encompass every race, religion, and ethnicity and are found in every state, city, town, and socioeconomic strata. They are teachers, dentists, engineers, IT specialists, secretaries, clerks, artists, waitresses, physicians, nurses, social workers, cashiers, mechanics, small business owners, lawyers, judges, veterinary techs, nuclear physicists, and everything in between.

According to an informal poll on Facebook in three private childfree groups, childfree women spend the majority of their disposable income on travel, clothes, entertainment (bars, restaurants, museums, concerts, etc.), cars, home goods, personal care, and saving for retirement.

Gross Assumptions Lead to Lost Revenue

In an interview with a group of approximately 100 childfree men (20%) and women (80%) ranging from age 18 to 65, the group felt almost entirely ignored as a demographic when it came to advertising.

“Stuff is either marketed to young pre-children folks or to families. It's a massive marketing blunder too, because DINKS [“double income no kids,“ a term commonly used to refer to married childfree couples] have got much more disposable income to spend on more expensive stuff than families anyway,” says Lisa, 29, of Michigan.

Brian, 25, of Oregon, believes that “this diminishes the validity of the childfree lifestyle- like it’s something we’ll grow out of- like being gay. But we won’t. This is who we are.”

Falling in Between the Gaps

Traditional marketing segmentation techniques, which typically take into account age, gender, race/ethnicity, life-cycle stage, dwelling/neighborhood, and social class, make gross assumptions about men and women who have chosen not to have children.