Dow Jones properties cancel CNBC ads slated to run on Monday

Bill Carter of The New York Times writes for Monday’s paper that CNBC ads scheduled to run Monday on The Wall Street Journal and Marketwatch web sites are now not running.

Monday is the day that Fox Business Network launches, and its parent is News Corp., which is acquiring the parent company of The Journal and Marketwatch.

Carter wrote, “In the case of MarketWatch, CNBC had bought both an introduction ad for the site — meaning that every user on the site today would have seen an ad for CNBC before getting to the MarketWatch home page — as well as what is called a ‘road block’ of ads — meaning CNBC would have been the exclusive advertiser on the site’s home page today.

“The decision to drop the ads from the Wall Street Journal site was even more significant because CNBC has been advertising on the site’s market data page every day since Oct. 1 and had a deal for ads to run daily for two months. The CNBC ads on the market data page were also to be removed for today only.

“Buyers from Spark Communications, the ad agency that made the purchase for CNBC, said that they had an official signed contract to run the ads. The Spark buyers, who asked not to be identified because of potential future business dealings with the company, said that the Web site representatives were apologetic for breaking the contract and promised to replace the ads and give CNBC a discount on future advertising, worth almost double the value of the original ads.”

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