For my opinion, this wouldn't have been such an issue IF:

1.  We had been told beforehand

2.  I have had nothing but wierd computer problems since this showed up.  I am wondering about spyware or some other nefarious worm embedded in this.  Just seems strange that I am having these problems to this degree now...

3.  Everything was going wrong yesterday (I know...not your fault LOL)

I am sending in a donation to Africam, for what it's worth.  I do love you!

Some more input since I think that's what you're requesting.

Regarding the popups, they are a bit of a pain, because at least for me, it's not so much the clutter, but that to make it go away I have to click somewhere on the page or the X to close it.  Sure, it's more of a convenience issue in my example, but it's input lol.

 The stuttering, I have experienced this as well, but I have only seen it right at first when the page loads up and I guess the software or whatever it is highlights the links.  It makes it jerky as it seeks out the keywords it's looking for. 

The more important thing, at least in my opinion from what I have read from other posters, is perhaps a betrayal of trust or something along those lines.  I'm sure that most of the people that inhabit these forums understand the need for money to keep the site they love running, however I think if you had told them first what was going to happen instead of it just appearing one day, it *might* have been better received.  

Also the issue of people worried about security and privacy... well in my experience these sort of things are usually linked with spyware and trackers/miners.  In fact that was my first experience with these types of links, it was some spyware I had on my computer that would I guess "browse" each site I went to and it highlighted text just like it was here, so if anyone else experienced that, it could have given them a scare.  I know it did me lol, I was like CRAP now what did I get?? lol.  

Anyhow, take it for what it's worth, input from a newb here, but an avid forum user in many other places, so I understand why you did it, but I think it could have been handled differently. =)  

OK, I guess we should make a comment about this & should have done upfront as we have done with most other changes....apologies for that

As u are aware, we are looking for all potential revenue streams that work whilst keeping a balance on usability.

We are trying this stuff out to see if it works and have implemented this for a few days to amoungst other things get your reaction. So far the reaction has ranged from netural to distaste to invasion of privacy issues.

Ill try & summerise so far:

1. The pop ups are horrible & clutters page

In general, the pop ups should not happen unless u specifically put ur cursor on or over the highlighted word

2. It slows the forum down

We havnt seen a increase in download page time, although at peak that may have been so. We are watching this carefully

3. It makes the scrolling of the page 'stutter '

I havnt really noticed that but welcome input

4. Blue colour makes it unreadable

Accepted & changed to yellow. If there are better options please suggest.

As mentioned we are checking this out and the only way to do this to make it live. We would ideally like to run this for about 14 days so that we can get a handle on the actual revenue.

There may be some other things we can do such as excluding it from certian pages.

Update:We have disabled this for the forum. However, this will reduce revenue.

Hey Maxx, I thought something was wrong with my computer with the jerky scrolling. I just rebooted and still have it. Don't seem to get it on any other site.

I am majorly bummed here....

I am getting the 403 error when I post...and now page scrolling is a mess because of the intext ads. Jerks all over the place. Posting is a chore and now just reading is chore.

Gonna take a forum break for awhile until some of these things are remedied. Just getting too tiring to deal with...

Okay, I see the key words have now changed from dark blue to yellow but it still doesn't help the fact that the annoying popups are still there. Sometimes they even say loading and sit there covering up parts of posts I would like to be reading and not waiting for the popup to do it's thing.

Please.... stop them.

Oh then it must have been my Adblock in Firefox who did its job. 

When uploading the pages, I saw many "kontera's" uploading and these are gone now. It was slowing down everything, for sure!

Well I wish for everyone it will stop soon!!! 

Thanks gerda for the update.. Im sure your doing everything you can!!!! And then some. YOU ROCK GERDA!!!!