Determing number of ads displayed in an ad unit

[KelliShaver]

Sometimes when I publish new content, the ad units on the new page don't fill up completely for a day or two (I'm not really sure why). For instance a 300x280 ad block may only show 2 ads instead of 4.

Is there a way (via javascript, I presume) to determine how many ads are being spit out into that ad block? I would like to find this info out because I place thumbnails/icons beside the ads and it looks silly to have a column of 4 icons alongside 2 ads.

I don't think this would be against Google's TOS, because I don't want to modify their code at all, just look at how many ads they're placing in the unit so that I can then modify *my* code to match.

If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I'd love to hear it.

[Chris]

It's gotta be possible, but not without knowing some things, like the exact markup for the code.

Intercepting and parsing wouldn't work because that'd be altering the code, or if you just intercepted to test you couldn't be sure what you intercepted was the same as what is displayed.

[KelliShaver]

Yah. I figure there's bound to be a way. It's just a matter of finding it.