SevenCubed - 1:54 pm on Mar 22, 2013 (gmt 0)

Surely, one could construed that it was bringing attention to the adverts, or even hinting to click on them.

That's the impression it left on me too. Using the Firefox add-on RequestPolicy when I arrive on the site the page is totally non-functional until I allow a call to an external resource that presumably feeds their CSS. From that point the page renders properly but I still would have to allow another call to Adsense to see the ads (I didn't in spite of the puppy-eyed plea).

I can understand a warning message indicating that proper site functionality requires javascript to be enabled. However they are not concerned about that. Instead the immediate emphasis is on the ads.

I thought I've read in these forums before that it's a violation of Adsense TOS to beg for attention on your ads? But this is a google sanctioned case study so I guess not huh?