Yes! And the cognitive noise. I find it literally impossible to read text if there's some blinking ad nearby. Before Adblock I'd have to put my had up to the screen to block the animation so that I could read the article text in peace.
You used to be able to hit ESC to stop animated gifs from cycle, but they took that functionality out (it was a benign side-effect that 'wasn't in the spec', so it was removed) :/
