Spawned by militant feminism, the observation of images of men and women in advertising has evolved in French academic circles, with the gradual incorporation of research questions from the sociology of media. By articulating the cultural significance of messages to an in-depth understanding of the actors and their rationales, a complex object has been highlighted, whose diverse and sometimes contradictory rationales cannot always be explained by the denunciation of social relations of gender, still marked by male domination. The phenomenon of growing interchangeability of gender roles currently witnessed in French advertising, as well as its limits, can be understood better in relation to two dimensions that have received little attention until now: the economic function of advertising discourse, and the social and professional practices of the social agents producing it.