I had once read that google doesn't allow placing ad units near an Image. I tried to find it on google TOS today but couldn't find it. I have a photo blog, and I serve ads on each post, and so, the ad-unit appears right below or above some pictures. On a day when i post fewer pictures, the CTR surges immensely from the daily average of 2% to 10%. I just want to be sure that placing the ad-unit too near the image is not a violation of the TOS.
I think it's not against the TOS but not really sure. I have seen adsense near the images on about 95% of website so if it was against TOS no one could use it.
I read somewhere that if you have inages next to the ads, you must have a border, like maybe a line or something that separates the images and the ads. Drop an email to google for confirmation on this.
yeah, i tried placing photos in a table next to my adsense ad and emailed google to find out if it was ok, they said i needed borders around the photos. I changed it and have not had any problems.
I've had some ads next to some pictures for some time now, and never received any emails from google. Personally, i never heard anybody who got banned becouse of pictures next to the ads. Anybody did?
As long as your image does not look like a PART of the google ad unit and as long as it doesn't force any visitor to click the ad, that's alright with google. You should either have a border around the image or have a border around the adsense ad unit. I see a LOT of sites playing with them tricks though, a lottt of websites. They are always on the verge of being banned from AdSense so I guess we should try to stay safe and play by the rules.
Some people here have gotten banned even though G said it was ok. It all the depends on the g rep that is looking on your site and what mood he/she is in.
I have successfully used images next to adsense ads to increase the CTR. You need to make sure that the image is seperated from the ads by a border and does not draw under attention to the ads (you know like blink arrow gifs pointing out the ads
I saw a site yesterday, with four nice icons each next to the 4 ads in a square unit. Nice recipe for getting banned it seems
For an authorative answer on this: http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/08/images_above_ad.html As long as you do it right, you won't get banned. There's even a Wordpress plugin that will do it automatically for you. This question has been asked so many times - should really be a sticky.