I think there’s a middle ground between not making any money by not showing ads and plastering half the page with ads in a way that almost renders the product useless. I’m sure this was a result of a long list of promo packets that incrementally kept adding 0.01% increases to the ad impressions.

Just one facet of what we call 'promotion oriented programming' (or promotion oriented design).

Google's promotion guidelines used to include that if you want to get a promotion on a technical track, you have to demonstrate a mastery of complexity. Cue the unnecessary complexity in some projects meant to get the author promoted.

(They might still include that requirement. I don't know. I haven't worked at Google in nearly a decade.)