I wanted my site to look visually better and flow more liquid when adding adsense blocks in my template. So I added some generic pictures next to the bottom adsense block separated by a border image. I sent off an email to adsense support to cofirm this was inline with the TOS but received a generic form email. I checked out the adsense support forums but didn't find anything. Has anybody gotten a specific response from Google in regards to images next to adsense. You can see examples on my site at http://www.communitytraveler.com and then clicking on an article.
That should be OK as you have the yellow bar between images and ads. Purely for aesthetic reasons, though, I'd prefer to see a bit more white space between bar and images/ads ... just would look nicer that way. But then not everyone likes my decorating taste, either. I think it should be fine for TOS.