Monetization is not great, but I think the biggest culprit in this case is a mix of competition, ad agencies and classic greed. The number of impressions is li

Monetization is not great, but I think the biggest culprit in this case is a mix of competition, ad agencies and classic greed. The number of impressions is limited and declining (moving from the desktop where you can put 15 ads on each page to the mobile where you have max 1 or 2 ads per page) and companies are fighting for the attention of the user while content providers try to squeeze as many adspaces they can in their pages to incrase/stabilize the declining CPM (cost per thousand impression), so they ask their ad agencies to create more inventive and engaging (attention grapping/annoying) banners. When they ask website to do their new and improved format, they usually get a no in response. Then they shove more money at the problem until some website can't say no anymore and accept the new format. Once someone else has accepted the others can't keep saying no or the company will only do banners with the competition that actually accept the new format, so everyone does. All new invasive formats usually start with clear and strict rules: only one each day, for a max of two per week. And we can show the ad to each users a maximum of twice a day. But this "rules" become progressively less strict as more and more companies want to purchase the new format that has a much higher cost and some ad manager will come to you faking sadness (while actually counting his cut behind his back) and say the magic words: "I don't like it either but it's how we paid your salaries and it's too much money to pass up." And this is how banner "standards" are born.