I seen there someone has mentioned increasing ctr on a proxy site. I've always wondered what the deal is with placing images beside 300x250 ad blocks to increase ctr. I've seen some sites banned for doing it and ive also seen some sites doing it for months without a word said to them. I was going to try it on myspacehive.com again but i don't want to risk getting banned. Can anyone explain from experience?
Google TOS clearly states that there should be a clear seperation between the images and adsense ads. But it might be OK to have images above the ads; but again its on a case to case basis. My take on this is, pushing it hard might get you some trouble. I do know that some pretty big sites got away with image display for a long time.
i'd put a border around ur image and a small line sperating the ads from the images. your visitors will still get the same idea and it should work with TOS.
You can use images no problems with it but do not use images related to the adsense ad displayed & do not forget to have a clear visible border between the images and the ads.