Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Truth In Advertising?

Sometime yesterday while on MySpace I saw this ad for an online dating service:



Because I was at MySpace, the ad was actually targeted based on my profile information, hence the "Find Singles in Leesburg" line.
That wasn't what really stood out for me, though.
It was actually one of the "singles" pictured:



The reason she stood out is that I recognized her as being adult model Sydney Moon, seen here:



(I'm reasonably certain that somewhere in the pile of digital bits that make up my largely unused and seldom looked at - although obsessively compiled - collection of pictures I actually have the picture used in the ad, but finding it would involve a lot more work than I'm willing to put into it.)
Somehow I doubt that Ms. Moon lives in Leesburg, and even if she did, it's even more unlikely that she'd have to make use of an online dating service.
(Her totally NSFW - after the initial page, anyway - Web site can be found here)
It's hardly surprising that dating sites don't use their actual clients in ads - I've browsed a lot of profiles and can't really say that I blame them for not making use of those resources.
And it's not the first time I've noticed them culling from the nude model pool: I've recognized at least a couple Playboy Playmates in the various True ads that are all over the Web with their totally un-True pictures of women who are supposedly using the service.
Again, I understand the reasoning and I'm not necessarily faulting them for trying to make a buck, it's just that the kind of lonely, desperate nerds (like me) that the ads are designed to appeal to are the ones who are most likely to say, "Hey, I know her, that's..." and call bullshit on the ads.
Of course, that being said, lonely, desperate nerds (like me) will probably still get suckered in by the pictures of hot models anyway.

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