Sponsors give Woods cold shoulder over sex row

NEW YORK: Tiger Woods, one of the hottest marketing symbols on the planet, is getting the cold shoulder on television where ads featuring the golf star have disappeared since news broke of his philandering.

Nielsen, the New York-based consumer research company, said the formerly ubiquitous Woods had not appeared in a prime-time TV commercial since a Nov 29 Gillette ad.

That was two days after his image went into freefall with a car accident outside his Florida home and subsequent revelations of a marital crisis over his alleged affairs with a string of women.