I did it for over a year and my CPM was about twice what it was with images off. Even when the images are separated from the ads by 20+ pixels and a line (though the line dropped CPM by about 10%). Since Google was not clear about what constitutes a violation I opted for the double CPM. Even JoelComm pushes it: http://www.joelcomm.com/instant_adsense_templates_size.html and Google puts him in the top 5 results for "best adsense template". So it's a big stupid game of who you know, good-ole-boys-clubs, and which side of the bed the guy reviewing your site woke up on. So think about this, if I did it for 1 year and got double CPMs then got cancelled, how much longer would I have to do it for if I didn't have the images? Would I make it that long or would they find some other reason to cancel me? Did you guess another year? Well ... That was close but actually if you consider the interest on the significant difference in income it would actually be about 14 months (assuming you can earn 10% interest on the difference).