go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5947614/the-canadian-government-accidentally-ran-a-bunch-of-ads-on-the-pirate-bay

The Pirate Bay tends to be a website that national governments aren’t particularly fond of. That being the case, it’d be surprising if a national government ran ads on the site, advertising an Economic Action Plan, right? Canada did that, but not on purpose.

Banner ads for Canada’s Department of Finance’s Economic Action Plan started showing up on the site a few days ago, right next to ads for finding a Chinese bride, as shown by an image from the Ottawa Citizen. The ads were removed quickly, and the Department of Finance is blaming ad networks that were included in their media buy, specifically Yahoo!.

Yahoo! is in turn pointing a finger at Sympatico:

We have confirmed that Yahoo! was not responsible for the EAP ad showing up on The Pirate Bay. We have been able to trace the ad to Sympatico who were responsible for this ad’s appearance on the site, and they have been notified of the issue so they can take the appropriate actions.

Regardless of whose fault it actually was, the fact remains that for a while, the Pirate Bay had the pleasure of running a few government-purchased ads, and is enjoying the irony. According to TorrentFreak they’re even considering covering the site with unsolicited ads for the plan, for kicks. Though only the first run paid in real money, a second one would probably pay pretty well in smirks. [TorrentFreak via CNET]

Image by Arkadia/Shutterstock

Tags: action, appearance, chinese bride, citizen, department of finance, EAP, economic action, Image, issue, national governments, ottawa citizen, pirate bay, purpose, Shutterstock, TorrentFreak, unsolicited ads, while, Yahoo, yahoo yahoo