Since AdSense now displays random number of ads, what do you guys think would be a better format: Large rectangle with borders(as adviced by Google rep) and images to the left. Large rectangle without borders to blend in, but no images. I believe this applies to Leaderboards too, with images above.
You won't know till you test it on your site. Right now, I'm still testing changing ads position and images to comply with Google TOS
In my experience, the blended method seems to work the best if you have sites that are content-heavy -- re: articles, etc.
Like alang said, you got to tweak your adsense format to see which brings about the best for you. The Adsense team has encouraged publishers to put a rectangle (border the ads) but some publishers are merely putting a horizontal border (for leaderboard)...
Just request for optimization tips from the google adsense team. I just got mine after 1 month request.
I think every site has its own best suited ad format. You better test different formats on your site. and if CTR becomes better, then use it for your site.
It's been only 8hrs since I taken out the images and the borders of my large rectangle format, but my CTR went insanely high! Could be due to the format being more suitable for my site, or my visitors was temporarily ad-unblinded, or it could even be that the new random-number-of-ads system is more suitable for blending instead of image beside/above. Or lastly, it could be a click-spammer!
Yes, specifically for your site, they will give comment and recommendation on what they feel will bring great revenue to you. I f and you can ask them to check whether your site is comply with google policy or not. So you can sleep well after that...