Or have you considered the more likely possibility that it’s simply their site policy to place ads wherever they can, which is not necessarily the original auth

Or have you considered the more likely possibility that it’s simply their site policy to place ads wherever they can, which is not necessarily the original author’s intention? Most likely the site just wants to make whatever they can from possible places to insert affiliate links regardless of the article, and that’s it. For all we know it might well even be an automated process to some extent. Having an affiliate link is unfortunate and very much not smart on their end I would say, but automatically drawing the conclusion that the whole article must have the single purpose of serving as a Trojan horse for this one random link that they also know only a small amount of people will click on is another logical fallacy, and IMO resorting to attributing to malice when things can be explained otherwise.