After the recent clarification the Adsense team made concerning images next to ad units, I decided to err on the side of caution and e-mailed Adsense support to do a review of one of my sites to make absolutely sure that it is in compliance. Two days later I received a response from them and luckily my site was still in compliance with the ToS (phew!). Their response did however contain a very interesting tidbit: If I’m reading it right those webmastersa need to be very cautious and work out another way to integrate their Adsense ads into their forum. So if you are using a similar method, please contact the Adsense support team to make sure that you aren’t in violation. Source: Webmasterspot.blogspot.com
"keep in mind that publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way" visitors should know that there are ads, i don't see neccesary to make a list of all things that are not allowed, i think it is very clear: "publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way", this is enough. If you don't know, or you don't want to know when your ads are disguised, then it will be no surprise if you will get banned. You can add google adsense in forum posts, but you can't make the ads to look like a forum post.
I am well aware of that, but where do Google draw the line... what exactly constitutes making it look like a forum post? Most of the implementations I've seen people use would definitely be considered as making the ads look like a forum post (had a username of Sponsor, Advertisement etc...). The point I was trying to make is that people using a technique like this should check with Adsense to ensure that they are not in violation. Better safe than sorry!