Yep, it's the same as when Google came out with their text ads. They were different, so people clicked them.
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Search-Engine-Users....
I've may have seen far more of such pages. But obviously i can't tell since they're near-impossible to spot the Ads.
The trend is keeping things "by the book" from search engines point of view, And manipulate humans in subtle ways by confusing contents and ads.
I have to say I kind of feel cheated by that trickery, every time, and it is one of the reasons (though not the most important one) that I use Google much less recently (in favour of DDG).
[1] no I'm not particularly happy about this screen, the rest of the machine is great but if I had known it would be this bad I might have picked a different model (I got an Asus EEE 1215B)
My guess is that (a) Google has optimized the ads for more clicks (b) advertisers have gotten beter at attracting clicks & (c) People are more aware of when to click on ads. If you're looking for a babysitter, you are more likely to have one booked ten minutes from now if you click an ad than an organic result. People have, consciously or unconsciously become aware of that and they click the ads when they want that kind of content.
I kind of doubt that myself and would like to see some numbers before coming to that conclusion. Especially if just talking about CTR instead of conversion rate. For the latter I'm willing to believe that if the techie clicks the ad, they're more likely to buy. Though that is a guess I'd also like to see supported with numbers :)
It might also be very different in the USA. If I see an ad with my search results, a lot of the time it's a US company and even if I would want to use a service on the other side of the ocean, I can only pay with either my creditcard or PayPal. I won't use PayPal and my creditcard is tucked away in some drawer somewhere. Actually, for any non-Dutch company (say, German), a creditcard or PayPal is usually the only option. On a Dutch site I can pay with iDeal via my bank card (zero transaction costs, authentication via text message on my banking account's site).