Adsense and image placement

Placing images next to Adsense ad units has become a very popular method of increasing the CTR (click-through rate) on websites. The principle was that by placing an attractive and eye-catching image next to the ad unit you immediately drew the visitor’s interest to the ad unit. Many webmasters had great successes with this technique.

There was quite a bit of confusion on what exactly was allowed by Google. The Adsense team has finally posted some very clear and definitive guidelines regarding image placement next to ads.

The sweet and short version is that they no longer allow images to be placed next to ads. This includes any images placed next to ads to make them seem part of the ad. Adding a seperator or line between the images and ads, will still be a policy violation. (Read the original Adsense blog post for clarification)

However you are still allowed to place ads on pages with images. You just need to ensure that the images are not aligned with the ads, in such a way that they could possibly be confusing to your visitors.

So any new webmasters should take note - Google no longer allows this technique. If you are in doubt, e-mail the Adsense support team and ask them for a review. A higher CTR is definitely not worth risking getting banned from the Adsense program.