Hi, Could you tell me if adding a picture like this to the ad at the top is fine? I've got spacing around the pic and borders to show that they're separate... But I don't know exactly how kosher it is... thanks.
I think its fine. many people are doing that and there is nothing in ADESNES Tos that you cant do that. AS long as picture is related to the adsense ads it should be fine. If still in doubt ask GOOGLE
yeah google generally won't penalize you for doing something like that however if you use deceptive means to get google pageclicks be very careful, for example if you were to ever make a post in your forums telling everyone to click the link their is a possibility that google would catch on to it infact they mention such activity in their guidelines and I have friends whom have been banned from google for this. They stated on their homepage though asking people to click on the sponsored links and google removed them from the adsense program and from what it appears also debited their page rank by 1 bringing it down from a 6 to a 5. Never try to think that you can outsmart google.
The police police the populace, ensuring laws are abided by as set by the law-makers who make laws... And, I think it has increased my CTR. But when your site has as few visitors (up to a whopping 40 now) as mine, can I REALLY be sure? Though I think it's the pic AND the menu-style on the left that help.
once i have google warning me about my picture need my adsense and they advise me to have a border around it. then its ok to go visible border around the picture = legal.