[JoelSutherland]

This linked article that talks about web pages sucking is 1.3mb and is first visible/readable after 4.9 seconds:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_SE_YM1/

An article from the site it complains about sure uses a lot more bandwidth (2.9mb) but at least it's visible/readable in 2.2 seconds:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150715_KC_YQK/

The bandwidth/resource waste sure sucks but having ads load asynchronously isn't as bad as a blank screen for 5 seconds.

[pbh101]

Visible, but not necessarily readable: "This does not necessarily mean the user saw the page content" [1]

[1]: https://sites.google.com/a/webpagetest.org/docs/using-webpag...:

[JoelSutherland]

The link I added has a filmstrip view where you can verify that this isn't the case. Alternatively visit the two sites yourself! The multi-second difference is perceptible to a human being.