Caveats: I am in no way qualified to do this; my sample is small and self-selected; the paper I read has its own...issues, so to speak, which brings in a further degree of self-selection on the part of the readers; once more, I am not a statistician, nor have I any interest in that discipline.
I broke down the information given in the ads into two categories, each with the same two divisions. The categories are Offers and Demands, and the divisions Appearance and Personality. Briefly, an Offer is any significant information about a person (and, yes, I decide what constitutes significance), e.g. "SWM, 40, 5'9", 270 lbs." A Demand is any request for a quality in the respondant, e.g. "seeks SWF, 18-24 blonde/blue, fit, attractive, for one night stand, maybe more". Appearance is self-explanitory; Personality is any non-physical quality, including "financial independent" or "sword swallower/snake charmer". Into the morass!
The ads themselves are broken up into four sections. I do not include the "Variations" area, since this is a family-friendly blog. Mostly.
Anyway: Women Seeking Men, Men Seeking Women, Men Seeking Men, and Women Seeking Women. Naturally, the WSM and MSW outnumbered the other two, making their percentages rather less influenced by a single ad, but MSM and WSW were over-represented in percentage of ads compared with percentage of population. My theory about this is below, with more on self-selection. For now, a breakdown (forgiveness, please, for poor formatting):
_____WSM___MSW___MSM___WSW
D/A___06%___27%___38%___18%
D/P___48%___56%___38%___55%
O/A___35%___54%___69%___18%
O/P___65%___73%___54%___100% (!)
A few notes about these statistics before we continue. They don't add to any particular percentage. This is because an ad may contain anything between a single Demand or Offer to all four sets. As previously stated, the MSM and WSW are easily skewed. WSM who Demanded Appearance always Offered it; MSW who Demanded Appearance -or- Personality always Offered something (not necessarily the same thing! "SWM, 50, fun, independent, likes music, seeks SWF, 20-50, trim, fit, attractive, for dining out, dancing, and movies" is a classic example of Offering Personality in exchange for Appearance. This was a trend with MSW, although not a pronounced one (less likely, in fact, than an Offer of Appearance with a Demand for Appearance, or similarly with Personality)).
So, firstly, we see that Men, of any orientation, are more Demanding than Women, although WSW are very interested in Personality. While we might expect Men to Demand more in terms of Appearance, a trend which we do see (although Appearance was seldom Demanded in any case; the most common area being MSM with 38%), MSW also Demanded Personality more commonly than any other group. Interestingly, MSM were the least interested in Personality.
Men, in fact, had a different style of ad than Women, regardless of orientation. While there was overlap, Women's ads tended towards the narrative: "New in town, SWF, middle-aged but young at heart, seeks friend or maybe more for...." Men, on the other hand, were fond of adjectives, often simply listing their Offers and Demands: "Me: 36, fit, athletics, loves hiking, reading, social drinker. You: SWF, similar age, interests."
Men were also more likely to Offer something, MSW Offering Personality more commonly, while MSM Offered Appearance. Women Offered less commonly, although WSW always Offered Personality ("animal lover, amazon femme, brutally honest...").
So, I'm sure not going to jump into the whirling razor-blade lined fun-ride of drawing conclusions. But a brief hypothesis: MSM and WSW are over-represented because of the comparative difficulty of meeting someone similarly inclined. MSW and WSM can go to a bar, or grocery store, or box social, and be fairly confident that the majority of the people which they encounter are potentially interested. MSM and WSW don't have that assurance, and so must rely on other means of meeting likely partners.
