User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Making Ads Better: The Basics/@comment-11515627-20170117042842/@comment-20644-20170117201107

Programmatic ads are definitely easier to ignore. That, of course, is a problem when dealing with industry standards that now prioritize viewability. If we were to do less direct advertising and have fewer directly sold ads on the page, including the ones that expand, then we would have to clutter up the page with programmatic ads. And when I say clutter, I mean way more ads than we even have now. They'd be all over the right rail, the top and bottom of the page, and maybe even in the content. We would have to accept anything and everything, including very low-performing ads that would further hurt performance on the site (check out our blog tomorrow for more info on ad performance).

We always ask questions about how often we should display ads that expand in order to ensure we're getting the user experience right, but in general direct ads are the best way forward to balance the performance needs of users and the industry standards in the ad world.