I am working on a layout for a site and I worked out a clever layout technique that makes it less apparent that the links are google ads, you can scroll down to the bottom of this page: http://you-dev.com/tutorials/articles/Make+your+XML+pretty+with+XSLT+-+Styling+a+sitemap to see what i'm talking about. Basically I just want to get a community opinion as to whether this is a "gray area", definitely wrong, or ok to do. Tell me what you think.
Changing the background color to "semi-hide" "ads by google" is not as bad as having "Related development resources: " just above the ads. So if a google staff member comes to your website he sees the "hidding" and thinks ... "interesting" (i doubt they haven't seen it before though), but when they see the thing mentioned above you'll definitely get at least an email if not an instant ban. First of all, remove that "header" from above the links (you're not allowed to make people believe that ads are not ads) and then it's safer to send an email to google and ask them if "semi-hidding" the "ads by google" is allowed. Just asking them that will not get your account banned, but the "Related development resources: " will.
Trust me on this. You will be warned soon enough...then you will have a very short time to fix it when they ask you to change it. I had some link units partially obscured by accident. Didn't know it was a problem until they emailed me with the warning.
I agree with the expert opinion here..why do you need to change the adsense code?? don't play with fire
No This is not violation of Adsense. I have blogger blogs and have got default similar setup with them.
I would definitely remove this. All adsense ads are supposed to be clearly visible. You have to be able to tell what it is.