Agree -they all do it. How do they justify the bounce rate? It's never once been shown to my knowledge that viewers love to have their browsing/reading/knowledge gathering interrupted by a volume-up video playing (usually) an ad.

Is it just so they can tell advertisers X amount of people "viewed" your ad?

The videos I'm complaining about on the NYT aren't ads. They seem to think they're CNN or something. I don't want CNN. I want a newspaper.