Some article websites (I’m looking at msn.com right now, as an example) show the first page or so of article content and then have a “Continue Reading” button, which you must click to see the rest of the article. This seems so ridiculous, from a UX perspective–I know how to scroll down to continue reading, so why hide the text and make me click a button, then have me scroll? Why has this become a fairly common practice?
Why do ads (videos with loud sound) always load before any meaningful parts of the page?
Because many are served by a 3rd party CDN that’s more robust than the original article.
Also might be part of the coding.
As I mentioned, small mom and pop shops can’t afford to give you free content without ads. So they prioritize the ad so they can get paid for the impression.
Unfortunately the content is not free to create and maintain.