Dear Cecil:
I have always had a special place in my heart for red heads. Gosh, I even married one.
However, lately I have observed a rather growing trend of using red headed women in
TV commercials as well as in magazines and other media advertising. While I am fully
enthralled with this preponderance of ravin haired beauties, is there a special reason for
this phenomenon ?? 
I’ve been noticing this myself, although I’m not lucky enough to be married to a redhead. (Though I love my wife more each day even though this is our 40th year of being together, redheads… sigh.)
I don’t think there’s a special meaning behind it other than redheads photograph particularly well on modern media. The color always seemed to be a bit off earlier. 50s redheads never looked natural and the color wasn’t popular for a long time after. Too much hennaed Lucy, probably. Combine the strikingness of red hair with the normally pale skin that accompanies it and you have advertising gold. So to speak.
I have to ask what you mean by “ravin haired beauties.” Raven is how it’s usually spelled, but it means black, as in the bird named the raven.
Red hair is called auburn, ginger, carrot, or flame.
I don’t have the answer to your question, but please be aware that “raven haired” refers not to redheads, but to those with lustrous black hair.
I have speculated that the producer or director of The Mentalist share my thing for hot red heads, because they have one on the cast and they add a red-headed guest star quite regularly.
I was in a Verizon store today (where they refused to fix my phone because its water damage strips were activated, probably because I breathe humid air on it or something, but anyway) and there was a large ad starring a family. Brown-haired dad, redhead mom and two angelic red-headed moppets. The weird thing was that Mom and Moppets all had the exact same shade of red hair. (I had plenty of time to notice this sort of fine-grained detail while I waited for 35 minutes for a technical staffer to help me.) This looked oddly unnatural to me, especially since I have many red-headed cousins, none of whom has the exact same shade as their red-headed siblings. Why would you tweak the image to give them all the same hair? Is it possible that they were all actually brunettes or blonds, but the ad director wanted redheads?
I knew a girl once who had the exact same shade of red hair as her father and at least one of her uncles. All three of them were a bright, blatant, not-even-close-to-auburn-or-strawberry-blond flaming red.
And given that many folks find red hair attractive, the more interesting question is not why ads commonly feature them now, but why they didn’t in the past.
Red hair is rare so it stands out which is what ads are supposed to do. I noticed Robin Meade from Headline news now has red hair.
You are absolutely right and I stand corrected - instead of raven, I should have said: “this preponderance of auburn carroted, ginger flaming haired beauties”.
That reads like something out of Revelations 
I’ve noticed a lot of the following:
Both of which probably make sense, from a keep-it-simple perspective – and which also presumably lead to a disproportionate number of redheads.
And as Lost fans know, Ravin haired is generally a fairly pale blonde. 
I actually commented on this the other day. With redheads such a small percentage of the population, why are they all of a sudden “trendy”? A backlash to beat up the ginger mentality? (I personally find them extremely unattractive–no offense)
If redheads are so attractive/rear/photogenic, why are there so few MALE redheads in advertising?
I take it you’re in the UK? I don’t think there’s been a “beat up the redhead” mentality in the US during my lifetime, and red hair (at least, on a woman) has been considered sexy here at least since the 50s.
I think the “beat up the ginger” line was from a recent episode of South Park. Never heard of it being a real “movement”… unless I’m just wrong. =)
It wasn’t the Farkle family by any chance? Oddly enough the guy next door had exactly the same shade of red hair.
Anyhow I have noticed one commercial featuring a red-haired woman who is an optometrist (or something) with red hair. But I notice it because she appears to have green eyes which really seem to stand out. To me it’s more eerie than attractive.
Warning: TVTropes link. Kiss the rest of your day goodbye before following!
Because red hair often accompanies freckles. Women with freckles are cute. Men with freckles are not perceived as manly and masculine.
I know - gross generality. I humbly await the outpouring of links to photos of manly men with freckles.
Here’s my theory:
–If the people in the ad look “regular,” or like your white, brown-haired neighbor, you won’t pay attention.
–One way to attract the viewer’s attention might be to use actors of color, or maybe actors from foreign countries. However, some people will think the advertiser was only doing this to be politically correct. Also, racist customers might be turned off by this.
–Red-haired actors solve the problem: They offend almost no one, are not politically or racially polarizing, but also attract attention.
Think about the annoying redhead in the Progressive car insurance commercials. She’s neither ugly nor very attractive, and there’s nothing offensive or upsetting about her. However, she’s very distinctive looking, attracts viewer attention, and is a hard face to forget.
Well, I’m not sure about female redheads, but the teenage male redheads of the U.S. seem to be getting a very hard time (in school and college) according to a young man on YouTube.
Here is the link (Explicit language and it’s very silly):
Well, I’d say it is fair enough if he feels bullied by the general society (accusations against television show South Park), but I think he chose to act in the wrong way.