A minimum of 1 Million pageviews per month - In other words you must have a daily traffic of at least 10-20 thousand pageviews. At least 100K-150K search queries per month - This approximates to around 5 thousand search queries per day. that's the requirement.
I'm middle tier too, although looking at your stats I'm rather a lot lower down the scale of middle than you are It is nice having a contact at Google.
I think you have to know the right people to get into the premium club, just like Google is known to award people within their own circle higher positions in the SERP regardless of visitors or quality of content. Personally I'd just like the ability to customize my ads so they can convert better. Current AdSense formats all look like they were designed in the 90s and will have a negative psychological impact on your visitors. In addition to customization, AdSense Premium also comes with private consultation. As of March 4 2013, however, Google opened up private consultation to anyone earning more than $25 a week (check the Inside AdSense blog). Hence, I urge all of you to contact Google and ask them to also open up customization to anyone earning more than $25 a week (or better, to anyone regardless of income). I think if we all do it, Google will eventually listen. Thanks!
I do not think premium account will not be banned. If there is a violation of google adsense terms they will ban the account.
According to a Google employee i spoke with last year, there is no specific criteria to qualify for premium status and no way to ask/beg/request/apply. if Google takes notice, they may upgrade your account. If you aren't getting at least 10's of millions of pageviews per month, forget it. Again, this is according to an Adsense team employee when I asked this specific question.
@athulbnair : U will not be getting banned if use adsense premium, U will have personal account manager, will get alert if ursite gettin problem, request ad size, etc.
A premium publisher can still get banned, but it wouldn't be easy. Unlike regular publishers, a premium publisher will get flagged and warned multiple times before Google pulls the plug. So if the account owner is on top of his communication, he or she should simply be able to fix the issue before getting a disabled email. Like I said, I'm not a "premium publisher" (at least not that I know of) but Google isn't stupid - they know that if they simply start kicking out high traffic publishers for simple infractions, they lose money in the end. I believe this month I'll be generating around $9k after the revenue share which means Google pockets an easy $4k off me alone. That's easy money.