Is Banner Ad Code Different than Image Link Code?

[eluviis]

Here's an interesting question that is more SEO related than anything.

Is the code used for banner ads necessarily different than regular HTML code to display an image with an external link?

The reason I'm asking this is because I have 4 ad squares in my sidebar for ads I've sold directly (not through a network like Adsense or Media.net for example). However, since I wasn't interested in metrics, I used simply HTML to place those ads and link the the respective companies.

Months later, that got me thinking. Does Google see that as wrong and expect to see something different? Like Javascript, no-follow or something else?

I know that the child themes I've used from Studiopress have not have ad widgets integrated into them (at least not the ones I've used) but I have seen it on some Themedy child themes.

I'm wondering if I'm shooting myself in the foot with that.

Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

By the way, you can see the ads on the sidebar if you look at my site...

http://rallyways.com

[eluviis]

By the way, I just inspected a Themedy theme for Genesis that has the ads widget, with Firebug. It looks like the code is just standard HTML with CSS formatting. Am I right? Essentially this means that having 4 ads like this per page, on a site with 400 pages, you'd have 1,600 links out.

What do you guys think? Is this OK? Should these maybe be Javascript instead? See the image:

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