Whether it's Time magazine or Cosmopolitan that's your read of choice, chances are the adverts in it are getting a lot sexier.

A recent study found that adverts using sex to sell rose from a meager 15 percent in 1983 to 27 percent in 2003 and continues to rise steadily.

You might think that there are some things off limits to sex, but it would seem that even a bank advert can be sexed up. However, researchers from the University of Georgia found that the bulk of the adverts that used sex were for impulse buys such as beauty products, alcohol and entertainment.

While sex might be a sure sell in general, previous research has shown that sex doesn't offer as much appeal to female consumers.

Analysing 3232 adverts from six magazines between 1983 and 2003, researchers discovered that around 50 percent of the adverts selling sex contained a model. The researchers qualified these adverts as sexy by gauging their body language and whether or not they were engaging in physical contact, such as kissing or touching another model in a sexy way.

Interestingly, adverts for health and hygiene offered up the highest score on the sexy-o-meter with 38 percent containing sexual imagery over the 30-year study period.

Beauty products came a close second, rated at 36 percent and medication (which included weight-loss aids) came in at 29 percent.

Overall, the continued increase in sexy ads over the three decades was attributed to the sex-obsessed alcohol, beauty and entertainment products. While in 1983 only nine percent of alcohol adverts were classified as sexy, in 2003 this percentage had grown to 37 percent.

As you might have guessed, researchers found that women were most typically used to portray sexuality - a trend which hasn't changed in the three decades the study spanned.

Hot hunks were less likely to get a focus when it came to sexy adverts. In fact, by 2003, they were only featured in six percent of the adverts in comparison to women who were featured in 22 percent of ads.