I was just searching for something on the web when I found these two fan sites perhaps built by the same person. The websites are salmahayek.in and alpacino.in The websites have got good traffic and PR it seems. But I think their adsense ads placement is against the google adsense TOS. They have placed big adsense ads besides images which look deceptive. They look as if they are related to the image whereas it is not so. I know it is a good way to increase the CTR but is it legal to place the ads beside the images as in the site. I have low CTR in some of my sites and I know such placement can increase the CTR but is it legal and allowed by google adsense. I am completely unsure as I find them deceptive and illegal placement. I want to increase the CTR of some of my websites but I do not want to go against google adsense TOS.
This placement looks like it will get a very good click through rate. He has positioned it so the "ads by google" is located off the page. So the ads appear almost like site links until you scroll down.
The placement is pretty fine. Its better then i have seen on many big authoritative websites. If you want to check, go to some big news website which uses adsense, and see how nicely they place bits of adsense ads in between their news articles/home page, by making them look part of the news itself.
Thanks guys for the confirmation. If those ad placements are fine then maybe I am too honest a publisher. I have less than 0.5% CTR in many of my websites but still I never hassle around with ad placements to be on a safer side. I try to blend the ads but take precautions so that my ad placement are not deceptive in any way. Maybe I will also need to implement ad placements as the ones shown in the sites mentioned above. Hope that my sites with 0.2% - 0.5% increases to at least 1-2% with such placements. Anyways thanks everybody for the confirmation. I give millions of ad impressions every month and my CTR is good only in a few sites. Hopefully with improvement in my ad placements it will increase significantly.