Big companies find their ads on rogue live cricket site

Leading companies have been advertising on a website that was illegally screening live New Zealand cricket games.

Telecom, TV3 and ASB Bank - a rival to New Zealand Cricket's main sponsor National Bank - unintentionally advertised on crictime.com during one day international matches against Pakistan this week.

NZ Cricket has moved to shut down the website, which is in breach of Sky Sports' broadcasting deal.

The online ads were bought in bulk through media buying agencies. Those agencies paid for spots on websites chosen by ad networks owned by Microsoft and Google.

NZ Cricket's commercial manager Peter Dwan said their US-based copyright protection agency was investigating the website. "They have investigators that track these sites and effectively close them down. They are obviously illegal because it's an unauthorised site."

A Telecom spokeswoman said: "We do not tolerate our advertising on websites that are bogus or illegal."

A spokeswoman for MediaWorks, which owns TV3, said the website had slipped through security checks and ads for its Monday night schedule had been pulled.

An ASB spokesman said it would continue to make every effort to ensure its ads were not on such sites.

AA Insurance, whose ads also appeared on the site, said they would review how it happened with Starcom, who buy their online advertising.

Richard Thompson of Starcom said it was up to ad networks to ensure sites were legal.