That little grey/blue icon up the top right near the Options button says to me that maybe you can shut off the left side, perhaps completely, But I guess the ads will still have to be removed by the usual way... I wonder what's happened to the chat window, ad-wise. I hope it's still a text ad.
EDIT: Yeah, mynetx says on the blog post linked to above that "This window split can be reverted using the button on the top right edge." So that's at least a bit of good news I guess
/ 
