Commercial themes aren't the main goal of this page and that's great. Every page needs a purpose. the previous design was text heavy at the top and that likely led to more clicks on the commercial link.

Perhaps instead of a simple listing of commercial companies like we have now, the directory could include commercial themes that have gone through a vetting process similar to wp.com. With all the ranting that goes on about Theme Forest, I would hope WordPress.org would really try to help commercial theme companies who are doing things "the WordPress way."