Online ads: Why do McCain and Obama need tooth whiteners?

I'm an unrepentant political junkie, and check multiple political Web sites every day. In checking out Politico.com today, I came across identical ad links underneath every photo of McCain and Obama, and they are bizarre, to say the least.

Politico.com offers some of the best political reporting online, and I check it daily. Today, when reading an article about McCain being "amazed" by fellow Republicans criticizing Sarah Palin, I looked underneath a photo of McCain and saw two odd sponsored links. One is for tooth whitening, and the other about a condition of the spine called spinal stenosis. You can see the photo and ads below.

Given that the photo shows McCain with his mouth open and teeth in shadow, I wondered whether the ad could possibly be keyed to the actual photo itself. In addition, McCain still suffers from his war wounds, and appears at times physically stiff and awkward --- could the ad about spinal stenosis refer to that?

So I went to a page with a photo of Obama, and the ads were precisely the same, as you can see below. Clearly, some advertisers believe that Politico's readership suffers from oddball problems.

Politico's text ads are handled by the AdSonar ad network, which also covers many other sites, including CNN Money, People, Time, and others. Nowhere else did I find such an odd juxtaposition of photos and text ads. So chalk it up to just one more strange thing about this strangest of political seasons.

Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld, and the author of more than 35 books.