Careful with your blended adsense ads
Recently, Adsense has published two new guidelines (rules) about ads placements and optimization. Just the opposite of their own post on adsense tips 
, now adsense publisher do not allowed to blend his/her adsense blocks. The reason is well blended ads may confuse readers and may mislead them to click the ads.
Inside AdSense: Another look at optimizations gives some example of site which breaking the new rules.
Rule 1: Ads shouldn’t be placed under a title or section heading in a way that implies that the ads are not ads.
For example, ads shouldn’t be placed under titles such as “Dallas Business Opportunities” or “Today’s Hot Deals”. Placing ads directly below titles such as these implies to your users that the links in the ads are publisher-created content. The example below shows a placement that does not follow this guideline.
This is still not clear for me. So placing the ads under the title is PROHIBITED or still allowed as long as the title should not lead the viewer to think that the ad is part of the website content.
Rule 2: Ads should be easily distinguishable from surrounding content.
Similarly, you should not place an ad unit by a group of links that has identical colors and line spacing. Doing so may cause users to think the ad unit is content created by you.
Are these two new rules only apply to small publisher? I view adsense top earner’s site still ignore the new guideline.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I think it is okay to still position the ads under the post title so long as the ads look like they are: advertisements. Like in the case of your post above.