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“Looking back now, our scraping of dimes may have cost us dollars in consumer loyalty,” admits Cunningham. “The fast, scalable systems of targeting users with ever-heftier advertisements have slowed down the public Internet and drained more than a few batteries. We were so clever and so good at it that we over-engineered the capabilities of the plumbing laid down by, well, ourselves. This steamrolled the users, depleted their devices, and tried their patience.”

And then there are video ads — especially auto-play video ads — that effectively ruin the user experience when they aren’t expected. It’s so bad that we at Consumerist now warn users when we link to a page with auto-play video. Another reason to use a plugin that blocks ads or requires the user to affirm that they want to see a video.