Why in the world would you put a near full-page sized ad at the top of the article? I seriously thought that the site had been hijacked at first
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
While not your traditional ad blocker done via browser extension, it does the job quite well and blocks the requests at the OS level.
I'm not the author or maintainer, just a very happy user.
If not maybe they need ads. So many people say they would rather pay directly but few do when given the chance.
You don't need so many paying readers to get more money than ads. I also think that people should stop putting ads on their website when the gains are so little.
If writing is your job, write for a proper good media.