Those thumbnails for articles that often start with "Twenty armies with the most..." or "Ten of the most terrifying" or "This amazing trick will...", all the major news websites use them in some form or another at the bottom of the page.
I call them article spam, all they are is a backdoor mechanism to show you ads. Their format is always as a 'gallery' so a 'next' button has to be selected to view more, this then enables a refresh function to show a different set of ads thereby allowing the author to sell more.
Often the grammar and/or spelling is bad and no amount of research will have been done, the author probably just Googled it and took from existing articles others laboured long and hard to research because, after all, they couldn't give a fuck about the content, all they want you to do is click on the damned annoying ads.
I admit I've tried a couple that intruiged me but I quickly saw them for what they are and no longer click on them, it still annoys me seeing them though.
