Are advertisements clouding our reading?

Today, I visited the USA Today website to read about the upcoming NCAA basketball game tonight between North Carolina and Michigan State. When I clicked on the Sports tab on the top of the homepage, the game was the first headline posted on their sports website. When I clicked the article to read about the game's prospects, I was not directly connected to my desired article. Instead, an ad for the Holiday Inn drowned my laptops screen and distracted my attention away from the basketball game. I was planning to write about the game tonight and what the experts say about their estimated outcomes, but I felt this topic was a little stronger. Are advertisements clouding our initial reasons for reading? Will they someday become so available that they will terminate our desire to educate ourselves through daily literature?

After a few seconds of searching, I finally found a way back to the article by clicking a button towards the top of the page labeled "keep reading." This also made me wonder: Do website creators feel readers are so easily distracted by advertisements that we actually lose our will to "keep reading?" Throughout my search for the escape button, the advertisement for the Holiday Inn became more elaborate and digitally intriguing. Is this an advertisers' initial goal? To distract readers with a product rather than allow them to continue their news education? I'm not really sure this argument is plausible, but it's definitely something I pondered.