I think that's the "easy way out," in a way. Sure, it's not easy to provide the services for free, but it also doesn't particularly excuse them.
Like Netflix vs. YouTube. Netflix fights for your ability to stream HD videos comfortably because you pay for the service. YouTube crams a perfectly-buffered, crisp HD ad down your throat before leaving you with a video that might stutter or fail to load even at 480p. Sure, people can't complain when it's free (though they do), but I think it really limits what an experience can be, and I don't consider that particularly user-centered.
I've noticed on Youtube they seem to buffer really popular videos really well, things like Gangnam Style when it was being played probably to tens of thousands of simultaneous users were surprisingly good - I think they have some sort of really good buffered caching or something. I suspect they might do the same with adverts that they know will stay the same and know they will serve to many users.
The disconnect is there for many videos where a perfectly buffered ad precedes a slow buffering video or something, but they seem to use that technology on some user videos too I think - or something similar.
Due to the nature of how CDNs work the ads don't normally need special treatment.
They simply benefit from being 'very popular videos'. Meaning they stay hot in all edge caches because everyone, everywhere is watching them all the time.
Like Netflix vs. YouTube. Netflix fights for your ability to stream HD videos comfortably because you pay for the service. YouTube crams a perfectly-buffered, crisp HD ad down your throat before leaving you with a video that might stutter or fail to load even at 480p. Sure, people can't complain when it's free (though they do), but I think it really limits what an experience can be, and I don't consider that particularly user-centered.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Edit: Fixed some parallel structure