From a business model perspective, the reader is not the 'customer', but the advertisers. The content is just the bait to get traffic, and then a publisher has

From a business model perspective, the reader is not the 'customer', but the advertisers. The content is just the bait to get traffic, and then a publisher has to monetize the traffic, most of the time by using ads to divert some of the traffic to an advertiser. So a publisher has to walk a very fine line between not anoying the reader too much but at the same time still have value for the advertiser. No wonder that some publishers go (way) too far and only focus on advertisers and almost forget the reader. Doesn't help that the ads are most of the time outside the control of the publisher, but are controlled by big advertising networks of course.