Just received this mail from Google explaining how the default color scheme for AdSense ad units is switching to be borderless:
We're writing to let you know about a coming change to the
appearance of your Google ads. Your ads currently display the
default Google color palette, Seaside (formerly known as Mother
Earth). In the near future, we plan to update the default palette to
Open Air, a new palette containing the same set of colors, but
without the blue border. We've found that many publishers prefer
the cleaner look of this palette and have also seen that a
blended color palette performs better for them — attracting user
interest while still maintaining the distinction between ads and
content with the 'Ads by Google' label.
This only affects ad code that doesn't explicitly specify colors. This will affect mostly inexperienced publishers who don't choose a different color palette. Most experienced AdSense publishers already blend their ads.
Looks like Google is looking for another easy way to bump up revenue. They've done this kind of thing before with tweaks to the ads they show on their search result pages.
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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.