Is it legal to do this thing that a lot of you do, putting a generic picture in and make it look like a part of your site.. for example a flash games site putting some mario thumbnail on the side of a small adblock to make it look like just another game is this legal? Or will you be banned from the adsense program by doing so? I mean it would rock my CTR if it was allowed? Some of you guys must have read the adsense ToS very carefully, anyone noticed any restrictions on this thing?
There's a lot of grey in this area. Here's what it says in the policies. Does putting icons next to the ads draw undue attention to the ads. Of course they do. But placing the ads in the middle of the Web form also does this. The later is clearly legal, the former depends on the details of the layout.