Small unclickable thumbnails next to ads

against TOS?

[Emilio]

Is having small unclickable thumbnail pictures to the left or right of adsense against TOS? I remember reading a post on this but can't find it now. I do remember someone saying that if there is a visible seperator between the pictures and the ads it's ok with google. Can anyone verify? Has anyone emailed google about this? Thank you

[Porkchop]

Not in my opinion. I see this all the time

[jomaxx]

The answer is, it depends. You're trying to walk the line between "drawing attention" and "drawing undue attention", and you need to do a mockup and show it to Google before proceeding.

In any case, "visible separator" is not the criterion.

[billcale]

What Jomaxx said, in spades. I'd even go further and present the case that this is a SUBJECTIVE decision that you're asking someone to make. Another Googler looking at the same piece may not come to the same conclusion. I think these things are always pushing the envelope. A little relaxing of the rules and you're OK but a little tightening of those same rules and you're gone. The immortal words of Dirty Harry spring to mind- "...do you feel lucky, p*nk?" ;)

[Emilio]

Thanks for your responses. I added to the left of my ads for an hour and the results were astonishing, actually I expected it. My CTR increased by over 600% and so did my eCPM. It is very tempting to put them back on, but at the same time I'm concerned that Google will not like it. I'll just have to check with them to make sure.

[nickreynolds]

I'm very wary of upsetting google, but sometimes you need to know where the limits are. If you contact Google with a query like this, are they likely to go through your site with a fine tooth comb and could you get banned as a result? Or will they just tell you what you need to change and when you do so they'll be happy?

[bobothecat]

My CTR increased by over 600% and so did my eCPM. It is very tempting to put them back on, but at the same time I'm concerned that Google will not like it. I'll just have to check with them to make sure.

I would definitely contact Google before puting the image back - the worst they could say is no... don't ask and they could say banned.