I have read various posts about this topic but there are either conflicting opinions or it doesn’t quite cover what I want to do. I have adsense on my site I want to add private advertising such as banners from different businesses, hotels and DVD retailers for example. These are not affiliates or any other kind of mass-advertising just single banners paid for by company’s that want to advertise on my sites, is this ok under Adsense TOS
IMO, you would be fine. Google restricts the use of any other "contextually" placed ad. I interepert that to mean a scripted solution like their program. Static or even rotating ads that come from your own effort would fall into that category.