Adsense is testing a new type of text referral ads that are contextual like the regular text ads. See screenshots of these new Adsense Referrals here. A very popular blogger and Adsense publisher confirmed the test since he himself is part of the beta group that's testing this.
i think they released there referrals 2.0 few weeks back , now this a new and interesting one we can maximize our earnings from it very much btw which version is this
amit, They have been contextual for some time now. I already discussed this long time back (about 1 month) about why ads are not appearing based on the exact referral code. People were facing issues such as if they choose a specific ad, something else comes up. This was basically contextual ads. I get the same ad on my VOIP blog, since it matches my content. It makes a lot more sense since people were abusing referral ads to a great extent. I know some advertisers lost literally thousands of dollars because people were entering fake contact form information etc. Of course google is not going to tolerate this so they eventually made the country specific ads and contextual logic in place to curb the possible violation. Hope that helps!
If you check the box "Pick best performancing ads" while generating the ad code they will go contextual.. I have noticed it.
Abhik, I guess the best perf. ads option is not available for text ads. In this case, I use code specific to Google Pack but as #3 comment says, Google is ignore the publisher setting.