Great question. The "don't wait for ads" policy has been around since ~2001, way before AJAX became common. In theory you could make it so that the ads loaded when they were ready, but that could also generate a visual "pop" that I imagine would annoy many users.
My preference is just to enforce a hard time deadline. If the ads team starts to miss that deadline and revenue decreases, then they're highly motivated to speed their system up. :)
My preference is just to enforce a hard time deadline. If the ads team starts to miss that deadline and revenue decreases, then they're highly motivated to speed their system up. :)