Wanted to see if you webmasters agree with me on this - I recently pulled adsense off my site (artworldchicago.com) to give it a cleaner look. Then I thought I would compromise by just using adlinks. They are actually working quite well, but I think it would be ideal to have regular ads in the same format as adlinks - ie just the title of the ad and no text under, leading directly to the advertisers site if you see what I mean. My two cents.
I peronally don't think minimal use of ads will ruin your site. It can enhance the reader experience.
Although I think this would be nice for the publishers I feel it would be bad news for the advertisers. This is because it would be easier to mislead people into clicking the ads.
When i'm trying to keep the adverts minimal I tend to put a link unit at the top and one text box at the bottom.
I think your exactly right there Deano, thats probably why they don't offer it - it could be blended too easily into content and potentially abused. Too bad though in my opinion.