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Take a look at ad placement technology if you want a likely culprit for why any given website is making an excessive number of requests per-page-load. In addition to whatever resource is placed immediately onto the page (and the ultimate ad creative), most ad snippets also bring in tracking beacons, additional JavaScript and completely new documents. Designers have a part to play in this, but I would argue that lack of engineering innovation is at fault for the shameful state of ad placement technology today.