The new buzz word I keep hearing in the SEM circle is this featured listing in specific pages. By nature it doesn't contravene any contextual ads provision. It should be a boon to a publisher as it augments the revenue stream.

Any one has views and experiences along this line ?

Haven't heard about it, but now you have me curious. Any examples we might view or articles to read?

I'm not visualizing it very well, so...

I believe you can offer Featured listing type of ads in your site subject to the proviso that you have a large enough traffic to justify. Or you can join some network which offers a wider base of similar themed sites for the advertisers. They don't pay on the basis of CPM or PPC. It is like print media - you pay for the space for a specific period of time.

You can see some sites in places like The Independent Search Engine & Directory Network - [link] -
. I have not joined any of them personally.

I see many articles and blogs on this topic and begin to wonder if we miss anything here.

Sounds like plain old ad buying to me. With the obvious twist being it'd probably be text-link based, rather than image based advertisements.

...which would just make it formally named link buying.

If I'm right, it's nothing new, and like all bought links, will get indexed, then disappear when you don't pay, thus negating it's value.

Fine if it's generating traffic, though, as bought links spaces tend to be cheaper than buying larger placements for image-based ads.

With G apparently "on the verge" of being able to tell bought links from organic links (I can see this technically, but come on, they'll never be 100% accurate in figuring this out), so they'll be discount their SEO value anyway.