In a perfect world, websites with 10s of millions of page views that pays for dozens of writers should have little to no ads. We don't live in a perfect world.
There are few sites where I disable my adblock+, SM is one of them.
The op probably don't have any experience running a big site like this.
I think it was justified in this case, as the ads actually pushed the page content below the fold. There was literally nothing other than the article's title visible in that screenshot. Ads are okay if they don't impact the readability of the content; once the ads start making it harder to get what you came to the site to find, you'll find your ad sales figures dropping as users become confused and leave.
There are few sites where I disable my adblock+, SM is one of them.
The op probably don't have any experience running a big site like this.