…by mistake, that is. The Canadian government’s Department of Finance has been running ads on the Internet in support of its “Economic Action Plan”. One on these ads made its way to The Pirate Bay. Since The Pirate Bay makes it money off advertising, this means the Canadian government essentially sponsored, or financially supported, the torrent website. Talk about notoriety.

As it turns out, the ad was run on The Pirate Bay by mistake. The Canadian government, which doesn’t want to be associated with the dark side of the Internet for obvious reasons, uses “brand safety filters” to prevent their ads from appearing on certain types of websites. The Pirate Bay is one of those blacklisted websites but somehow the ad still ended up there. The Canadians, however, immediately pulled the ad once they were notified.

The government of Canada is placing the blame for the ad appearing on The Pirate Bay on Yahoo:

The Department of Finance did not purchase ad space on The Pirate Bay web site. We did however, include 4 ad networks in our media buy (Bell Media, Canoe, Microsoft, Yahoo).

Each of the networks mentioned above use the most effective brand safety filters available and follow strict guidelines for all Government of Canada advertising campaigns. In addition, each network confirmed that this site is not owned by them and that the appearance of the ad on this site is unauthorized. However, upon further research  it was determined that some banner ads were appearing with  an “ad choices icon” which traces back to Yahoo. 

Yahoo is now looking into the matter and in the meantime, we have asked Yahoo to halt all EAP ads until the matter is resolved.

For its part, Yahoo is deflecting the blame onto a third party:

We have done a thorough investigation into the claims made in your article and 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.

While the finger pointing continues, I would like to express my feelings that I think this is an example of tax payer dollars well spent. Amirite?

[via Ottawa Citizen]