User blog comment:Adam Carey/Making Ads Better: What We've Done So Far/@comment-2763-20170119064419/@comment-20644-20170119175527

We'll talk about this more in tomorrow's blog too, but background ads and large ads like the ones you described are here to stay. Those are important parts of direct ad business, and they will help us remove many of the other ad units that clutter the page.

The aim is to focus more on the holistic page experience. We feel that if a user has to see a large ad, they should not have to see seven others on the same page. These kind of controls are things that we've been putting into place this past year, and that will continue into this year as well.

Ultimately, this is a scenario where everyone can benefit. The high-end advertisers that bring in a lot of revenue don't want to have their ads next to the lower-quality programmatic ones, and would prefer to be the only ad on the page. We can bring in more revenue from that, allowing us to clean up the ad experience in general. That, in turn, gives a more premium look to communities (plus better page performance) where they don't have to be cluttered with junky ads that can drive away readers and contributors.