The ad is for Walser Subaru, a local dealership in Minnesota, so it is likely only showing up for those of us in the Twin Cities. The new ad appears to have started running today, Wednesday, April 16, 2008 (Walser had an older ad that didn't exhibit this behavior).

While the animation is running, the browser becomes unresponsive and jerky while the CPU utilization goes to near 100%. I've reproduced the behavior on multiple modern Macs with both safari and firefox and isolated it to the new Walser flash-based ad.

Please contact your ad network to have this ad removed from your pool. I am unable to use the site when this ad is up since slowly hitting reload until I get an American Apparel ad is getting old.

Thanks!

P.S. I sent an e-mail to Walser as well, but, expectedly, have heard nothing in response.

And I'm sure that your CPU is the only reason you keeping reloading to get the American Apparel ad ;)

LOL!

That is a... distracting... ad, isn't it?

Not that anyone seems to care, but the ad is still there and as bad as ever. It's unfortunate since I told everyone I know about the61.com and since most are in the Twin Cities, now they're telling me how slow and jerky the site is. It's a shame to have this wonderful service destroyed by a badly behaved banner ad that the61 really has nothing to do with.

If there's any way you can get that ad out of your pool, I can use the site again. I had to wait 2 minutes for the animation on the ad to stop so I could type this post. That's how bad it is.

I don't know about ads pegging you CPU (though that completely sucks and has happened to me before), I do know that the Everclear ad that plays music automatically is really really really really really really really really really really annoying.

As is the Michael Buble one I just encountered. I was scrambling around trying to figure out where the hell it was coming from. Nearly blew my frickin' eardrums out.