We all seem confused on this issue, so I thought I’d ask the Google Adsense team how they feel about pictures used in conjunction with Adsense. Here’s what Casey from the Google Adsense team said:
We ask that you exercise caution when placing images near the Google ads on your site, as AdSense publishers may not rely on deceptive implementation methods to generate clicks.
To be specific, we ask that publishers not place misleading images near Google ads or use images that appear to be directly associated with the advertisers and their offerings. The use of such images may confuse users or draw undue attention to the ads and result in unintentional clicks.
Finally, publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way, for instance, by formatting neighboring content to look similar to the ads, or by making ads look like games or forum posts.
So, pictures in conjunction with ads are allowed, but only if it is clear that the picture is not part of the ad or if the ad isn’t disguised. I use pictures that are not in anyway associated with the ads’ subject to draw attention to the ads on the page, rather than trying to cloak them. Then again, I’m only getting a 2% CTR on most of my sites so it may not be the most effective of methods, but it keeps me clean with Google.
