Steal This Ad.

If the crowds at Los Angeles Avengers games this spring seem a bit thin, it could be because the fans are made out cardboard.

John Tamanaha, the Arena Football League team's director of marketing, said an ongoing campaign that places ersatz Avenger backers at bus stops around the city is not guerilla marketing, as the team bought the bus bench space for the life-sized ads. Even the ads behind the cutouts, which are mounted with double-sided tape, are fake ads for dental services with a phone number that leads callers to the Avengers.

The double-sided tape anchoring the cutouts to the benches is hardly sticky enough to deter Angelenos with sticky fingers, however.

"You'll begin to see fewer and fewer of these because People are stealing them," Tamanaha said.

Tamanaha said the Avengers ordered 20 percent more cutouts than it needed to sit at 5,000 benches because the team and its advertising agency, Mendelson/Zien Advertising, were daring people to steal them. In fact, Tamanaha said, the team soon will invite fans of the team to bring the pilfered cutouts to the games for a ticket discount deal.