It looks like you've brought up the most important point: the design of a page is altered based on advertising revenue.
90% of the JS being loaded is for tracking to increase advertising revenue. Much of the styling for a site that has no advertising can be fairly light.
If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience that would run quickly on mobile devices.
> If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience that would run quickly on mobile devices.
I would flip that: we need to explore ways to generate revenue which don't rely on practices like trackers, structuring content to inflate page-views, etc. which don't benefit the user.
The most obvious example I'd use is ArsTechnica's approach of disabling ads for subscribers – I notice this any time I use a new browser and pages take twice as long to load because web performance just isn't a priority in the ad world.
>>> If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience
But then rather than poor content, there would be next to no content (for the masses) because business have expenses ;)
Speaking seriously, yeah I see what you mean. Maybe reducing ads and improving speed would result in better UX, which would lead to better user retention, which would leave to more ad clicks. But that's a lot of maybes. Why risk that if people are used to ads? Ads often come when subscription is not an option.
You can explore other revenue sources (e.g. affiliate) but they are usually not widely applicable. And other than that, there's not much to do. I don't really think there exists a business model which could replace ads (when, again, subscription is not an option).
On a related note, I think depending on ad revenues is not such a sustainable practice. Its a feast or famine strategy and eventually a lot of businesses are going to realize that. Targeted marketing improves this, but the greater the noise, the more our brains learn to ignore it. Subscription or sponsorship models are a tougher sell but provide more loyalty and consistency for free content.
90% of the JS being loaded is for tracking to increase advertising revenue. Much of the styling for a site that has no advertising can be fairly light.
If we focused less on revenue generation we'd have a much much smoother web experience that would run quickly on mobile devices.