There are two likely reactions here: What’s the big deal? and That doesn’t sit right with me. Pick one for this line: In order to test the impact of print advertising on Website traffic, two Philadelphia newspapers created a fictional airline, advertised it in their papers, and measured the Web traffic the ad created, disclaimer coming somewhere towards the end of the process.

Wait, before you form your opinion, would it make a difference that the ad was funny and ridiculous enough that even the proverbial “moron in a hurry,” the guy they use for trademark confusion, would smell a rat?

Okay, the story: Philadelphia Media Holdings took out 36 ads in its two papers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, for Derrie-Air, a new airline charging by weight and selling lower-cost tickets to customers willing to stand in the aisle or ride the wing. Please visit the website for more information.

A general, good-natured sense of humor will probably allow you to forgive what some people are arguing is a breech of professional ethics. It’s hard to demonstrate what harm was done, but the technicality-minded remind us this was a form of deception, which could qualify it as false advertising and doesn’t quite fall in line the whole paper-of-record-bastion-of-truth ideal.

The landing page is in-depth BS with a paragraph disclaimer at the end:

The Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens. All names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, and other information appearing in this campaign and the associated website are fictitious. Any resemblance to real or fictitious names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, or other information, is purely coincidental and unintentional. In other words, smile, we’re pulling your leg.

But still, it’s funny and nobody got hurt, like that time you accidentally walked into the women’s rest room, or that time Ashton Kutcher punked George Lopez. Not exactly behavior you want out of your newspaper, though, is it—a deliberate falsification, a prank, a trick, an experiment in untruth?

Especially when it’s easy to doubt one line in the confession: “to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic.” Um, yeah right. Obviously, it’s easy to have mixed feelings about it, especially if you let it ping around skull too much.

But I wonder why Philadelphia Media Holdings felt a fictitious ad was the right thing to test to begin with? They couldn’t test a real ad for that? Maybe introduce a special discount subscription rate, or make a deal with a real advertiser instead of expecting everybody to get the joke?