CHERRY HILL, N.J. — Joanne Solometa hesitated to steer her van into the ShopRite parking space between the crisp white lines covered with black writing because she thought it was off-limits.

Close enough to read the message, she laughed out loud.

" 'Parking for desperate housewives.' Hey, that's me. How did they know?" joked the Cherry Hill, N.J., working mom.

The parking stripe is actually an advertisement for the popular television show, seen on ABC Sundays at 8 p.m., information which appeared in smaller type on the stripe. The unusual ad is getting high marks from shoppers.

"Very creative, even though I'm not a fan of the show," said Samantha Akan of Cherry Hill as she strapped her 2-year-old daughter into a car seat.

"We're so inundated with eye-level signs, we don't see them anymore. These are new and very noticeable," said Michelle Brown of Camden.

The Cherry Hill parking lot is one of 20 sites in New York, New Jersey and Los Angeles to be striped with "Desperate Housewives" advertising "to build buzz among female viewers for the fourth-season premiere of the show," said Jodi Smith, vice president of public relations for Alloy Media + Marketing, a national firm that hired Parking Stripe Advertising of Denver to do the job.

"We work with a lot of companies that do cool things. This seemed like a novel idea. It catches people's attention yet doesn't interfere with their experience. We're talking food shopping here. The reaction so far has been fun and that's what we're looking for," said Smith.

Rebecca Osborne, president of Parking Stripe Advertising, said the three-year-old business is growing rapidly because it taps an unused source of income — and can target ads to specific audiences.

At ShopRite, for example, her company sells, installs and maintains stripes for 30 days at $30 to $40 a stripe, with a minimum of 250 stripes per venue for Alloy. It also pays a fee to Kimco Realty Corp., which owns the Cherry Hill shopping center. Alloy supplies the language and ABC logo on the stripe, and bills ABC.

"What better place to reach 18- to 34-year-old males than a stadium parking lot? Mercedes dealers might want to stripe upscale malls. You can't TiVo parking stripes. On the other hand, public schools might start looking at their parking lots as another source of revenue," said Osborne.

Other notable customers so far include United Airlines, All State Insurance, Halliburton Corp. and Coors.

While the business has that "Why didn't I think of that?" quality, Osborne said it is not as easy as it looks.

Perfecting the materials and creating dialogue with major media buyers and commercial real estate companies have consumed most of her time. In addition, the simplicity of the idea makes it too easy to duplicate, so getting trademarks in order was key before ramping up the business.

Made in China, the stripes are pieces of PVC vinyl that are 18.5 feet long by 5 inches wide. The message or digital-quality image is printed on the vinyl, then laminated. The stripe is affixed to the ground with an adhesive.

Theft has been a problem with the "Desperate Housewives" campaign, Osborne said.

The company is experimenting with glow-in-the-dark strips and strips with a sound chip to give drivers an audio rush as soon as their feet hit the asphalt.