jbayabas - 1:54 am on Oct 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

They bring un-needed attention to the adverts. In turn, people will click on the arrow and then click back because they didn't think it was part of the advert.

All you have is a theory, nothing else. If your claim is true, then Google would have stopped running the new adverts a long time ago. The fact is - the new style advert is working and has helped a lot of publishers, including myself.

It is perfectly fine to call attention to the ad as long as it is WITHIN the ad itself. There's a big difference if you put thumbnails beside the ad that are totally unrelated to the ad, which Google deems to be against their TOS.