Dow Jones started a bit of a kerfluffle over its dropping of ads for CNBC on two of its sites in favor of ads for Fox Business Networks, reports The New York Times.

CNBC purchased two prominent ad blocks on the MarketWatch financial news site, owned by Dow Jones. The ads were to run yesterday, the day of Fox Business Network's debut on TV and on the web. But MarketWatch wound up running ads for Fox's new channel instead.

CNBC also purchased two months of ads on WSJ.com's Markets Data page. Those spots also wound up running ads for Fox Business Channel.

Fox executives said the decision was made to avoid visitor confusion, since there were links from FoxBusiness.com to MarketWatch, where there would have then been an ad for CNBC.

They also said that the CNBC ads would simply be moved to another day.