Adsense Beautifier violates Adsense TOS

I’ve posted here before that your Adsense beautifier *might* violate Google Adsense’s TOS. It wasn’t a straight clarification so some people removed them while others (like me) retained them thinking that as long as the images are not related to the ads, it won’t be a problem.

Noemi emailed me saying she got a notice for Adsense Support Team asking her to remove the plugin:

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as …..

Publishers may not implement Google ads in a manner that disguises the ads in any way, for instance, by formatting neighboring content to look similar to the ads, or by making ads look like games or forum threads. Additionally, publishers may not attempt to associate specific images with the individual ads appearing on their sites. Such an implementation may confuse users who assume that the image is directly related to the advertiser’s offerings.

Please make any necessary changes to your web pages in the next 3 business days. We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other pages are in compliance.

Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to your account within the next three days, your account will remain active but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note, however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found in the future.

Thank you for your cooperation.

I actually got a similar email days ago but totally forgot about it after complying with the Adsense team. We’re just glad they informed us and told us explicitly about it. So, if you have the same plugin in your blog, you can act now before they email you. ;)