Those Infidelity-Promoting Ads on LifeTwo

One of our readers pointed us to an ad Google placed on LifeTwo -- for an infidelity-promoting "married dating" site!

The site AshleyMadison.com uses the advertising tag line "Are You Married But Looking?" According to compete.com, over 500,000 people a month are curious enough to visit. That makes Ashley Madison more popular than established specialty dating sites such as JDate.

They have an extensive marketing program. Not surprisingly, their advertising seems targeted to men, and their own FAQ says they have a 5:1 male : female signup ratio.

When Google placed this ad on LifeTwo on their behalf, we had to decide what to do about it:

Here at LifeTwo we cover midlife infidelity extensively (here). We've written that while not every marriage can or should be saved, couples frequently give up on their marriage too easily, to the long-term detriment of all concerned (link). Making cheating easier, and actively profiting from it -- if someone clicks on the Ashley Madison ad, we make a few cents -- does not fit with the positive, supportive, problem-solving approach we promote here.

So we blocked it from running again. If someone wants to use an online service to find someone to have an affair with, they'll figure out how -- just not through us.

--- The ads we run that say "Ads by Google" are placed into LifeTwo by Google's automated ad serving system, which seeks the best fit between ad and site content. We don't know what ads will appear but we do have the ability to block them if we know the URL of the site they are promoting. Please let us know if you have objections to any of the advertising on LifeTwo. We can't promise we'll pull it, but we will listen.