Google has now informed us that placing images next to ads in Google AdSense is a violation, and users caught demonstrating this will be banned from the program. Putting an image next to an ad is just a really good way of blending it and making it look like part of the actual site, which will result in more clicks. This is seen commonly among arcade sites, but sites of all genres sometimes use this tactic. Google just wants to make them look more like ads, which may hurt the CTR of some of your sites. Like they already aren’t trying to kill it enough with that new ad format…
Anyways, if you have images next to the ads, it’s in your best interest to take care of that before you get banned. Read more from Google
here.