Hi Bill, coincidentally another user named Bill reported the same thing today (in https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1420917, unsolved).

Do you use any ad blocking or privacy filtering add-ons that might be preventing content from that site from loading? Extensions such as Adblock Plus, Blur, Disconnect, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Ghostery, NoScript, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin or uMatrix usually add a toolbar button that allows you to manage what they are doing on the current page. If you can't see their button, it's probably on the drop-down list for the Extensions button. See: Manage your extensions using the extensions button in the toolbar.

Can you find a culprit?

Yes, I have only two, Adblock Plus and Adblocker, but both are disabled on the Google search page. I added allowable cookies, ect. on both Google.com and googleadservices.com, but still no go.

This hasn't always been an issue, but I can't say for certain when or what version of Firefox was in use when it stopped working, maybe 3-4 months ago. I should have asked this earlier, but it's just an annoyance. See the attached image.

Thanks, Bill

In the other Bill's thread, clearing Google cookies resolved the issue for some reason. ?? Please see the other thread for steps.

Clearing all cookies was the first thing I tried, but that didn't work.

Looking at Extensions, it turns out that my AV program, F-Secure, was blocking googleservices.com. Turning it off, allows these sponsored links to work again. I'll have to dig into F-Secure to see if there some exceptions list.

Thanks all fro your help.