I think that it is something that helps. In my experience, footnotes promote further reading because there is more of a tendency to read through an article and

I think that it is something that helps. In my experience, footnotes promote further reading because there is more of a tendency to read through an article and then look at the footnotes. I think this is corroborated by ad placement strategies (or more like this links). Users tend to read through, then look at what's at the bottom of the content at which point they'll take action on it.