"But all the other kids do it!" has never been a good reason to knowingly violate the policies. Trying to parse the policy to excuse violating it is really not a good idea.

Here's a question, do your readers see the same content (withput scrolling) in portrait and landscape orientation?

I know all kinds of sites violate these kinds of policies and get by with it for years, so what?

How many lines/paragraphs of content does that 300x250 ad replace?

Put the content first. Between a header and navigation bar(s) there really isnt that much real estate to begin with, at least on smaller mobile screens.

The "trick" is to write content that gets the reader to scroll down far enough to see the ad.

So the answer is, stop worrying about ad placement and start worrying about writing more effective articles.

Give the reader a reason to scroll down.

.

An AdSense rep once told me that putting a 300 x 250 above the content (not the fold - the content) on a mobile site would be considered too aggressive for policy. But that was a while ago - ask your rep.

Personally, I would not do it because as a user, I would consider it a poor user experience, and I will not go bigger than a 300 x 100 above the content.

It's one of those "violations" that you can get away for a long time, and is quite an easy fix if asked to change. It is rarely checked.

But from users's point of view, I avoid sticking ads above the fold. You want to build a long term site instead of quick bucks. Aggressive ads positions can usually turn away repeat users if sites is meant to attract repeat users. Can probably work well for sites that exist to hit 1 stop only users.

I minimized site title and menu bar, in some cases even removed menu where not helpful. Place a paragraph of introduction, explain what the page is about, how it can help the users get what the want. Place an ad after, then after the ad the main "body". So pretty much the setup you are planning.

I was talking to someone who said something similar to Frank (right above this post), that you have to ready the fine print carefully. It's a bit tricky here.

Adsense says - "placing a 300x250 ad unit on top of a high-end mobile optimized page" - the keyword being "on top" of the page, not above the fold of a page. That refers to sticking it all the way above [how some users have a leaderboard above the entire page). I believe you are allowed to use a 300x250 above the fold on the basis that it doesn't completely push the content below the fold (where user jumps on and sees nothing but ad).