Offtopic, but ITWorld redirected me to a full-page ad before I got to the article. Above the ad, it said "the page you requested is loading" as if this excused

Offtopic, but ITWorld redirected me to a full-page ad before I got to the article. Above the ad, it said "the page you requested is loading" as if this excused the presence of the ad. Are people really more amenable to looking at an ad if they think it's because they have a slow connection? Why do many sites blame the user's connection speed when (a) showing ads or (b) doing server-side processing?