Some of these pages never "finish" loading. They use a tracker script that pings a server every so often with your current position in the story, so they can get stats on who actually reads the articles vs. who follows a link and then bails out.

Exactly! The worst (or best) part of having a slow mobile site is mobile platforms are, by and large, single-task platforms: you click on a link and then look at the screen until the page load.

If your website makes me stare at a blank screen for over 5 seconds that's it, the attention span for your low-content article that I was about to read out of boredom is gone. Close tab, click next link.

I guess it's a self-limiting problem in the end :)