That would not surprise me in the least! In fact, that's exactly what happened at a company I used to work for (that shall remain nameless). At the behest of

That would not surprise me in the least! In fact, that's exactly what happened at a company I used to work for (that shall remain nameless). At the behest of the design team, we implemented a complete redesign of our site which included changing the home page so that at most only two media items could be on-screen at a time, and the ads which used to be simple banners now were woven between the feed of items. I remember sitting in a meeting where we had A/B tested this new homepage, and witnessing some data analyst guy giving a presentation which included how "engagement in the B-group was increased by N-percent!!!" The directors of web content were awestruck by this despite no context or explanation as to why supposed "engagement" was higher with the new design. The test wasn't even carried out for a long duration of time. For all anyone knew, users were confused and spent more time clicking around because they were looking for something they were accustomed to in the original design. And no, it did not matter that I brought up my reasons for skepticism; anything that made a number increase made it into the final design. Then, we actually had focus groups, long after the point at which we should have been consulting them, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly lukewarm or negative. Much of it vindicated my concerns the entire time; users didn't actually like scrolling. Then again, I guess if they're viewing more ads, then who cares what the user thinks?? Never have I felt more like I was living in a Dilbert comic than that time.