Yeah I think this sucks ass. I agree that Adsense is way too picky. I think instead of banning all and any images next to ads completely, they should see the benefit of images - IF by all means, those images are general enough (i.e. not product specific, etc.).
I have been using images next to my ads with great success. The sites with images have CTRs in the 50-150% CTR range. The sites without linger around 20-50% so in my experience they have a big impact. And by the way - I always make sure to select very broad and generic images like a woman's face for "half-price Holland hookers" or just a dog if I'm doing "canine viagra".
In my view, the advertisers will only benefit from the increased CTR you can bring with well chosen images. Like the example they gave in that article... What the fuck? They are just GENERAL images of some fruits. And the ads displayed are FRUIT related. Result? The publisher (we) get a better CTR, and the fruit advertisers get more traffic and sales from us because of this.
What I can understand is images that are deceptive to the user. Let's say, you have a site and ads about digital cameras, and you put up images of specific Canon or Panasonic models. Clearly, the visitor will be lead to believe that the link he/she cliks will bring him to cheap Canon cameras or whatever - and then it turns out the advertiser they visited don't happen to offer any Canon cameras. Now THAT is deception, and only benefits the arbi publisher since he got the CPC anyway while the advertiser just wasted a CPC.
The only way Google can monitor the use of images is to do manual (human) screening of sites. And I'm sure they have and will ban some Adsense accounts this way. But if Google wants to be ad nazis like this, they better use a little common sense when screening out deceptive versus beneficial use of images next to ads. And perhaps they should change their TOS to say "be aware that the use of deceptive images next to your ads (with example) is against our policy and is subject to account suspension. If you use images next to your ads, be sure to use very general images not related to any specific product, trademark, label, brand, service, logo, price, offer, or other (with example)"
Just banning ad-images altogether is not the way to go, and it does nothing but limit ROI for both publishers and advertisers in the long run. :moon: