I used to work in the marketing department for a big news site in Switzerland some years ago. I wasn't involved much in normal ads, but building interactive campaigns, contests and such.
What you say is being done. Mostly in form of "native advertising" these days. But those articles tend to be written with virality in mind, not necessarily usefulness.
In my opinion, most of the worst ads come from remnant space advertisement. A middle to upper management person discovers some unused white space while browsing the site and asks the marketing department to fill with something that makes money. Repeat until the site is completely plastered.
But because those ads bring in so little in isolation, it is not worth it to have your own sales people trying to sell them. That is why they get outsourced. The publishers I met back then, did not like Google/Facebook, because it their opinion they took to big a cut. But it is either that, or not monetizing the space at all.
Another big problem is, the advertisement agencies developers who build the things to be included in websites, tend to be junior/intern level under massive time pressure. Practically no QA and little to no thought put into consequences by any of the involved parties.