The Holy Grail of internet publishing: maximizing the click through rate (CTR) on your websites.
As you attempt to improve your CTR, you'll be walking a fine line between making your content and your advertising appear to be one cohesive unit, and tricking your readers into clicking the ads; ie, using AdSense as it is meant to be used and violating the terms of service.
That said, it has been proven time and again that having images next to or above your large rectangle advertising helps to improve the CTR.
Now you never want to blur the line between your own content (the images) and your advertising, but placing pictures near targeted ads is a perfectly viable means of making your ad space more attractive, and therefore more profitable!
Get that money!