Not exactly the same, but theverge.com has recently decided to shove about 50 Outbrain ads, across 3-4 loads, in between the end of the article and the comment section. It makes me livid every time, yet still I go back :(.
I'm fairly convinced sites do this because someone there is sick of having to moderate their comment section, but doesn't have the buy-in to get rid of it entirely. So instead they stick a bunch of ads above it, hide it behind a button, etc. in hopes of annoying people into not commenting.