[dismas]

It's against the Google TOS because they pay you per click. So you're basically just asking your users to pad your wallet. They aren't legitimately interested in the products/services offered by the advertisers.

Yes, by saying "sponsors", you could be referring to anything such as local retailers that you've worked out a deal with to display their banners. But Google probably won't worry about the semantics of your argument. They have enough other accounts that they don't need to worry about cutting you out by violating their TOS with your "but I just used the word 'sponsors'" argument.