[valarauca1]

    page without any advertising on it is 2MB and has a 
    DOMContentLoaded event at 1.29s

    With advertising, it is 3.9MB and 1.82s

This does not support your core argument about ads being the issue.

The ads load in 602ms.

The page loads in 1290ms

The ads are 1.9MB of data

The page is 2MB

Yes the ads are very heavy. But how are the ads slowing the page down exactly? The page is already INCREDIBLY slow without them.

Only ~30% of load time is spent with displaying the ads. The other ~60% is what ever brain damage the NYT web team cooked up. If anything you are enforcing parent poster's point.

[bastawhiz]

I doubt the payload is the problem in most cases. The ads load asynchronously, in most cases, and cause other types of performance issues. When an ad loads and causes your scroll position to be lost, or when the ad takes over the screen and can't be closed, or when you get a malicious ad that starts running JavaScript that starts opening alerts and redirects you, all of these things simply don't happen with AMP.

[sametmax]

+1. What's more, you can choose advertisers according to the size of their ads. And if you are big enough, you can ask them to modify them.