Absolutely. Google's making ads look like search results [1], but let's bring up an example from the early-to-mid 2000s [2] because that's extra relevant here when today's relevant search engines put ads confusingly at the top of your search results. The ad isn't a "sponsored result" but it's fair to say the results are sponsored (and confusingly so).
Regarding #1, did you ever notice how the "dark pattern" that article was about got reverted shortly after that, except not on DuckDuckGo which still contains that "dark pattern"?
I heard about it being reverted, but I have seen far too many people, myself included, click the links at the top thinking they're the first result when they're not. This article on ads offering gov services has some great examples in it.
Look at how they intentionally tried to differentiate the ad from the rest of the search results: large swaths of white space separate the top sponsored ads from the rest of the search results even in a time when monitors were smaller, with clearly different link and background colours, etc.
I wonder if anybody's built a browser plugin to provide Google search results pages that look like they used to back in 2001? ;-)
I believe it was the placement of the favicon in regular search results that was reverted because it appeared in the same place as the word "Ad" in the ad.
Hah, my tired brain didn't even clock that consistently wasn't there for the actual results. Which I guess also says something about it being a clear distinction...
(DDG seems to do it the other way around: results have favicons, ads have nothing in that spot. anyways, adblocker back on)
1. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Media_Native