Tangled Web

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By Kelly Jane Torrance

As online dating has lost the stigma once attached to it and millions of people flood big sites such as Match.com looking for love, niche dating sites have begun to proliferate to help narrow the field.

There are services for all sorts of people looking for something specific: animal lovers, gays, vegetarians, blacks, Christians, black Christians. One of the best known is JDate, the Jewish dating site. Yet its 700,000 members are a mere third of the number attracted to another site that has been under the radar until recently.

AshleyMadison.com has 2.2 million members and just launched a million-dollar advertising campaign - but national networks think America isn't quite ready for a dating site for the already attached.

AshleyMadison's new 35-second television commercial features an insomniac man lying next to a slightly zaftig woman. He sneaks out of the room holding his clothes. "Most of us can recover from a one-night stand with the wrong woman," a narrator intones. Cut to a photograph of the man and woman together - on their wedding day. "But not when it's every night for the rest of our lives. Isn't it time for AshleyMadison.com?"

The site specializes in connecting people who are already partnered but seeking no-strings-attached affairs.

The company bought ad time on channels including ESPN, CNN, Fox News Channel and Spike, but the networks seemed to have second thoughts. ESPN, for one, says it has instructed its affiliates to quit airing the ad.

The company's site went live at the beginning of 2002, but the new ad campaign marks the first time it has sought a mainstream audience. It used to advertise during airings of "The Jerry Springer Show."

It's having trouble getting the new ads to stay in place. A billboard in New York's Times Square showed a couple entering a hotel room and urged, "Life is short. Have an affair in New York City." It was removed after just three days.

"They got a call from one of the hotel operators across the street," reports Noel Biderman, president and chief executive of the Toronto-based Ashley Madison Agency. "They said they were going to burn it down if they don't take it down."

The CEO can't see what all the fuss is about when those same networks air ads with tag lines such as "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."