Hi dcassara,
if your issue occurred after installing these plugins, then it’s very likely that the plugins have messed up your database somehow (probably not hacked), especially because you see strange random characters.
What you could do in first place is delete the plugins and see if that solves your issue. If not, you could try to reinstall the theme, although the theme won’t fix database issues. To do this, you could switch to a different theme, then delete your theme and reinstall the theme through your WordPress dashboard.
If you want to upload the theme as a zip file, then you can download it here.
After you’ve reinstalled the theme from www.ads-software.com, you can be sure to have clean code without stuff that doesn’t belong there. But again, it doesn’t seem that your issue is theme related, it rather seems to be an issue with your database.
However, if you really think that your site could got hacked, you could scan the site for malware or else and also take steps to clean up the site. Here you can find more information: Introduction to WordPress Security and How to Secure Your Website.
In general malware can infect a website via various ways (infected code, infected computer of webmaster, advertising, malicious images, plugins, scripts, etc…). when you install 3rd party plugins or scripts, you should always only install code from trusted sources.
