[mthoms]

You're right, good catch.

One could argue the words surrounding the carousel on DGG ("Shopping" and "Ad") are slightly more transparent than Google's "Sponsored" heading, but that's splitting hairs I guess.

In either case, I find both carousels pretty obvious in their intent. Maybe it's because the prices are being shown? I think more sophisticated internet users are trained to know that when you see a $xx.xx price on the internet, along with a link to purchase the item, there's probably some kind of commercial relationship happening behind the scenes.

These days, whenever I see a product mentioned anywhere on the web with links to purchase it, I default to assuming it's an affiliate link.