KVIA general manager Kevin Lovell visited his station’s website a few days ago and to his horror, the site had been overtaken by crosstown rival KTSM.

A large banner at the top of the site displayed a photo of KTSM’s marquee anchor team along with the NBC-affiliate’s theme “First.Live.Local.” So what happened?

In a post on KVIA’s website, Lovell explains that KTSM infiltrated the site by accident. KVIA had purchased “remnant” ads from Google Adsense and the ad network was serving local ads, apparently targeted at a web user interested in TV news.  Of course the big problem was that the ads were attempting to draw users away from KVIA to KTSM.

KVIA general sales manager René Santana posted a screenshot of the ads on the station’s Facebook page and jokingly wrote,  “I just wanted to personally thank KTSM for becoming a part of the KVIA local advertising family. Obviously KTSM recognizes the value and size of the KVIA.com audience to promote their business. Thanks!”

In response, KTSM general manager Gary Sotir messaged Santana explaining that his station has a broad advertising deal with Google and the ads apparently weren’t caught in the competitive filter.

KVIA continues to work with Adsense but has since filtered out all KTSM ads.

[h/t NewsBlues]