All -
I'm also a member of corvetteforum.com, which was purchased by IB in the recent past. I have to tell you, you RCT folks are incredibly nice compared to the reception they received over there. The changes did include advertisements that appear on the first post of a thread. Initially, the advertisements included animated objects. The first happened to be an advertisement for the Dale Earnhart movie
The backlash was immediate and fierce. IB reacted quickly, and in my opinion, properly in removing the animated addy's. The transition, since the initial fracas, has been pretty good. There are ads on the first post of a thread, but they don't eat much bandwidth. The site is more stable since the change. Some people left the site, but most stayed. All-in-all it has been a positive change.
Keeping these sites active costs money and time. Whether we like to admit it or not, the innocent world of the bbs is long gone.
I hope that IB has as much success here as they have had on their other sites. BTW, go to their homesite and look at their BoD if you want to see if they're serious...