I work in this industry. Blame dumb ad buyers and publishers. No one wins when experiences are disruptive and piss users off. It makes the user dislike the publisher and the advertiser at the same time. Unfortunately too many advertisers are really bad at measuring the quality of what they're buying, so they keep paying for eyeballs and ignoring the fact that their ad was served beside 20 others on a page that took so long to load that most users bail before ever seeing the page content (much less considering their ad). Most online advertising isn't bought by targeting publishers directly, so your ads end up all over the place and you have to know how to spot this stuff in your data and do the work to weed this type of shit out since you really don't want to be buying it. What's surprising to me is that publishers aren't smart enough to see that this short term cash grab is going to kill their business. I also refuse to visit sites or close videos when they have absurdly intrusive ad experiences. I hope most people do and I hope the businesses that refuse to change these practices go under. It feels like flashing, music playing, full screen banner ad takeovers of the 90s again, which is something publishers purposefully pulled back on in favor of better user experiences. Why they're testing the waters of how annoying they can be before users start jumping ship again is beyond me. Publishers, give users good experiences and place ads minimally beside those experiences unobtrusively. Advertisers, target your audiences well and make compelling creative that grabs the attention of your well targeted audiences even when ads are placed unobtrusively. This shit should not be that hard, but instead of doing it right it feels like we're in a race to the bottom.