I’ve seen these ads for realage.com plastered all over websites for at least a year if not more now. In some ads they’ve featured the “real age” of people like Barack Obama and John McCain even. I was surprised to learn from Stepahine Clifford writing in the NY Times and reposted on CorpWatch that Real Age is a lucrative avenue for Big Phrma.

According to RealAge, more than 27 million people have taken the test, which asks 150 or so questions about lifestyle and family history to assign a “biological age,” how young or old your habits make you. Then, RealAge makes recommendations on how to get “younger,” like taking multivitamins, eating breakfast and flossing your teeth. Nine million of those people have signed up to become RealAge members.

But while RealAge promotes better living through nonmedical solutions, the site makes its money by selling better living through drugs.

How does it do this I wonder?

Pharmaceutical companies pay RealAge to compile test results of RealAge members and send them marketing messages by e-mail. The drug companies can even use RealAge answers to find people who show symptoms of a disease — and begin sending them messages about it even before the people have received a diagnosis from their doctors.

Wow. Join Pointdexter and his dreams that temporarily resulted in the Information Awareness Office, where most of the programs are now continued in the DOD somewhere I’d imagine, would be proud of Real Age and Big Phrma. It also turns out that this site even has a doctor promoting it on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

And it has become something of a sensation in the marketing world. Many marketers, online and off, segment potential consumers within broad categories. But RealAge gathers very specific information and, unlike some sites, it gives its consumers an incentive to tell the truth, namely, a chance to live longer.

So is this going to be the new marketing trend? Are we going to see similar websites springing up to engage us and convince us to give up all of our information so that we can be better marketed to? For example I can totally see some “green lifestyle” website being created where it gathers information from environmentally concerned netizens and then sells that information to corporations.

RealAge allows drug companies to send e-mail messages based on those test results. It acts as a clearinghouse for drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, allowing them to use almost any combination of answers from the test to find people to market to, including whether someone is taking antidepressants, how sexually active they are and even if their marriage is happy.

This is rather depressing to read. However I do have to say that this is a great article by Ms. Clifford. This is the kind of reporting I’d like to see more of in the New York Times.