NOT!
Shouldn’t the bottom line be about relevance? I am not completely sure that I understand the point of a paid link being considered as something as evil and taboo. If I am running a shoe store and I have the opportunity to pay for a link in a blog about basketball shoes, should I? Of course I should. It is relevant and useful for the visitor of the basketball shoe blog and for the visitor to my site.
Instead, the search engines like Google feel it is “better for the user” if I create some B.S. link bait to get other sites to link to mine. How can you say that me creating a silly “throw the ball in the basket game” and getting other sites to link to mine (many off topic) is better than me spending $20 a month advertising via a link purchase. I just don’t get it. How is the more value to the user by generating link bait? There isn’t.
Greg Boser brought up this point at SES. He asked why coming up with irrelevant link bait is rewarded while purchasing a relevant ad on a niche site violates Google’s guidelines.
Google, please get your head around this one. At the very least, lay out your reasons.