Is this a TOS violation?

Please check:

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Air-Conditioner.html

Notice that the ads are on top of the page. You will not recognize them as Google ads. But they are.

The font is much larger, and different, and totally unrecognizable as a google ad.

 

This is a premium publisher - different rules.

 

How do you know a publisher is "premium" and how can the rules be sooooo different?

 

A good sign they're a premium publisher is that their ads look different - in fact they can look just like these ads! As for how the rules are so different - ask Google.

 

Whoa... I bet they have tremendous CTR, with the ads looking like they are lovingly and carefully selected links by the website's author(s)... on top of the page, too...

 

I think, premium publishers are selected because of huge traffic to their websites...

 

Yup, you need at least 20 million page views per month or 5 million search queries for your site to be a premium publisher.

 

Geez is that all. I guess some people have found there calling.