Obviously just damage control but they do seem to be "fixing it". They must've accidentally implemented a feature to get and show image from the newest news post (which is often an ad), accidentally tested and vetted that feature, and accidentally pushed it.
you don't get entire functional UI elements accurately populated with appropriate data out of a "bug". at best its a feature that was being tested internally and never would have made it past that, at worst its something that went live early.
Oh whoops I accidentally built an entire ad portal and placed it onto the main page and oh no I accidentally passed it through multiple levels of code review QA and approval, then crap I deployed it to the test environment then prod
Yeah it is possible he's accurately, but misleadingly, calling it a bug because it was not meant to be deployed to production (yet). I do not think that's how he wants or expects people to take it when he calls it a "bug", though.