These news sites run ads that are borderline gore, disturbing images promoting snake oil weight loss or skin care treatments, and wonder why nobody wants to click into their site.
Wait a minute, what? What I read from your comment is that on your work machines the screen savers display ads? I mean, I’d heard Windows was getting bad with the ads, but surely it doesn’t work that way out of the box.
That the news sites allow bottom of the barrel advertisers on their site primarily reflects negatively on the news site, for not curating their partnerships. They decided to become a tabloid, and should lose an according amount of respect.