Interesting to see someone else see this.. I've been noticing siilar for some of my sites, but also for other searches - recently 'liquid dog nutrition' eg.. so I too get the feeling that putting article based stuff front and center they are encouraging users to click ads - and for commercial sites to pay to play or get shut out.. it's terrible when you have a great site on page 3 of google results and see the crap they put ahead of you on page one - while shady sites pay to advertise there.

more and more like (a worse version) of the yellow pages every quarter.