Many of our programmers and writers agree. We're an advertising-based business (free online news) so I view this as one consequence of that
A small chunk of these are due to social and other 3rd party features, a good chunk plain old analytics tracking, and another small chunk are due to our "brand lift" advertising guarantees (e.g. in some cases its ensured that readers are actually seeing your below-the-fold advertisements before we charge you for them).
That said, yes, more than a few Ghostery hits are so we can, e.g., buy an ad to reach Forbes readers when you're visiting Adweek.com or something. Ghostery is great and a useful instruction tool for showing the "boiling frog" that is pixels.
A small chunk of these are due to social and other 3rd party features, a good chunk plain old analytics tracking, and another small chunk are due to our "brand lift" advertising guarantees (e.g. in some cases its ensured that readers are actually seeing your below-the-fold advertisements before we charge you for them).
That said, yes, more than a few Ghostery hits are so we can, e.g., buy an ad to reach Forbes readers when you're visiting Adweek.com or something. Ghostery is great and a useful instruction tool for showing the "boiling frog" that is pixels.