If the purpose of advertising is to capture the viewer's attention, then you can't argue that marketing agency Sports Media Gaming did its job. It recently painted a 100,000 square-foot advertisement in a field in Surrey, England, along the flight path for airliners arriving at departing from nearby Gatwick.

And what, you may ask, was being advertised? An erotic website... complete with the giant silhouette of a naked female pole dancer, that is visible to thousands of airline passengers each day.

You may see where we're going with this. A spokeswoman for the Tandridge Council has demanded SMG remove the ad, which the council says is illegal. SMG maintains it's perfectly fine, and since it can only be seen from the air is immune from council planning regulations.

"We are operating quite within our rights. We produce adverts that are only visible by people in the air. If the council own the rights to the airspace then we would be happy to hear from them," said Steven Johnson of Flightpath Media, a subsidiary of SMG.

The lurid ad has already attracted thousands of dollars of advertising revenue, he added... so much so, the company plans similar ads in the coming says in fields near Manchester, Leeds, and Stansted Airports.

This isn't the first time SMG has been called out for its risky business. In 2005, the company was forced to pull a similar ad from a field near Gatwick. That painting -- for a deodorant -- featured a man, two naked women, and... well, you get the idea.

And we thought laser pointers were a dangerous distraction for pilots flying into airports...

FMI: www.gatwickairport.com/