Another ad features a topless girl in a pool passionately kissing a boy with his back to the camera. The critical words came from the New York Post: "A Nasty Piece of Work." Get this: Ad Week magazine revealed a new trick on CW's part: The ad is racier than the show. In the actual scene from the show, the girl is wearing a bikini. So network promoters have (SET ITAL) fewer (END ITAL) scruples than the networks they're promoting.

A third ad by the CW network marketing department promoting "Gossip Girl" features two teenagers in bed, and it triggered this critique from the Parents Television Council: "Mind-Blowingly Inappropriate." This was the ultimate spit in the face to parents. The message sent to their children: You should watch this show upstairs in your room while your nerdy parents aren't looking.

Marketing consultant Tina Wells took on this campaign in The Huffington Post with an interesting twist. To what degree are the show promoters on the CW network really just perpetuating their own kinky stereotypes of teens, instead of reflecting the real attitudes of their target audience? Advertisers see young people as nothing but sex-hungry bags of hormones. "It's what they want kids to be, but I bet when they're sitting in that room coming up with the show's concept, there isn't a person under 20 anywhere in the vicinity."

Wells goes to the numbers. "Gossip Girl" has been hailed in the media as a hot place where teens go to watch the pretty young things display the latest fashions (at least before they take them off). But it's not true. Wells suggests these smutty new CW ads are "an act of total, irresponsible desperation," since the show "averaged 2.6 million viewers per new episode, and only about 500,000 are teens, the show's supposed target market." By comparison, MTV's "The Hills" blew "Gossip Girl" out of the water in terms of popularity among teens, and it's a reality show produced on a fraction of their budget. CW's problem? Their teen scenes aren't seen as realistic.

In the final analysis, the irony of all this advertising is that it's actually the opposite of boldness or daring to try and exploit sex to sell goods. It's become the most hackneyed trick in a yellowed old book. Those executives signing off on this garbage are little more than dirty old men. And women.