Here is the most frustrating part:

Publishers could create efficient fast-loading web pages if they prioritized it (and a rare few do) but its just not a priority for most even though its in their best interest.

You can have ads loading on a web page, even with header bidders, if you structure it correctly. In fact you can implement an ad solution that allows for fast loading pages and better optimize your ad revenue - whether you're doing pragmatic or direct.

I know this because I've done this before. At a past employer we cleaned up their mobile version (they used the "m.example.com" format, so we could push this as a separate rogue experiment) and saw ad revenue grow by over 30% while giving readers a better, faster overall UX.

I actively monitor top publisher article pages and you can see how bad (and good) it is:

https://webperf.xyz/

TL;DR Keep using an ad blocker

Wow, it’s really interesting to see the sudden unchanged nautil.us made around the 4th of March!

This is very cool, nicely done.

One note: the Property link, that links to the actual news source, is broken.

Also, the test link you're using for Nautilus (the top scoring site) is 404 (https://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-multiverse-as-muse)

Fixed the URL for Nautilus. Updates will roll in over the next 24 hours as tests happen and it averages out.

Its on my roadmap to auto-update the URL over time to avoid this very thing!

Thx to those who pointed it out.

This is pretty cool!