Take a look at the seo big boys touting text links ads .... http://www.text-link-ads.com/testimonials.php
Those testimonials will be from a while back when Google didn't take an aggressive stance against paid links.
Yea they are from way back but still comical, for those that take the ethical stance against paid links ...
TLA is right in googles crosshairs. SEMOZ is not affiliated with google so they don't care about paid links. Plus people get paid to say stuff all the time. I am surprised that they would let themselves be affiliated with them though. Not a place I would want to be featured but I guess I don't have the clout that SEOMOZ has.
I have used text-links-ads many times with great success because you can get contextual links that are almost impossible to detect that they are paid. They look natural so they are still worth getting!