This article is a poster child for the issue. The page hits seven external metric sites (per Ghostery) and hits you with a subscription popup midway through that also scrolls you back to the top, making you lose your place. Winning!
I'm seeing 11 trackers (6 advertising, 1 essential, 2 analytics & 2 social media) per Ghostery, but didn't receive any popups.
The "how much have you read?" indicator is pretty neat.
"Google users don’t block search ads because they are useful."