May I place the 468x60 ad above an image?

Hello,

I am running a site that has a blog-type layout. Although, it is not a blog, but a site.

Here is how the 468x60 ads appear in the content:

PAGE TITLE (article title) comes first line
"ADD THIS" SM bookmarking icons below it
ADSENSE 468x60 ad under
(2 blank white rows/space)
LARGE IMAGE that covers the space below the AdSense ad - part of the article
TEXTUAL content

Basically, the AdSense ad is between the page title and the large article image.

I know I am not allowed to place ads near images so that people don't associate the ad with the image. But this is different: the ad is above an image.

Is this correct/allowed? I haven't seen anything banning it in the terms...

 

Hi you say you know that you are not allowed to place ads near images, but sorry how is placing it above the image different? It's still near the image is it not? Go ahead by all means, but they will most likely ban you (See below). Why bother with the risk? And you clearly know it's a risk otherwise you wouldn't have asked for advice on it here.
Read this quote:-
What if I place a space or a line between my images and my ads? Would that work?

No. If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

The quote is taken directly from http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html
It's not in the TOS but most people get banned for their sites not meeting the website quality guidelines, which this falls under and not the TOS directly. Of note is it took me under 30 seconds to find this out. I suggest an overall reading up on the guidelines may help you avoid getting banned

 

I wasn't sure, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I filled the space up with content, now the image appears much lower on the page.

At first I thought above the image would be fine, since it's not on left or right side.

I did research AdSense's terms, but they often sound so ambiguous. The reason I asked was that they didn't show any vertical placement examples, they were only referring to horizontal.

But I guess when it's ambiguous, it's good not to " dance on the edge", so that it cannot be misunderstood/misinterpreted...

 

Mate, your are not allowed with that placement. I received a warning last month for same placement, Google stating that "AdSense Ads can't be placed below misleading post titles". I was shocked not because of my Violation but they said misleading post titles.

 

What do you mean by that?

What I have now is a 468x60 TEXT ad right under my page title. Textual content comes below it.

Is this what you were referring to?

 

It's hard to judge it without seeing it, but if you have plenty of text between the two you should be fine. It's easy misinterpret what the policies say, but if you read them carefully it says that there should be no corresponding to the text or mimicking the text images:

Publishers should also be careful to avoid similar implementations that people could find misleading. For instance, if your site contains a directory of Flash games, you should not format the ads to mimic the game descriptions.

But if a clear distinction is made between the ads and the images you should be totally fine.