I agree with you that learning about new products can be a genuinely good thing. I don't think ads are the best way to deliver this information, though.
My wife joined a Facebook group dedicated to house cleaning, and the products the ladies have recommended (Bar Keeper's Friend, Scrub Daddy, Bissell SpotClean) have all been fantastic.
The paid ads on her Facebook are either scams, AliExpress crap sold at full price, or established brands we already know (Amazon, Big W.)
I'm not completely against marketing. I pretty often buy things advertised in podcasts, stuff that obviously paid for product placement in specific places. But those are ads that fit the medium, usually they're very related to the topic at hand. This is not at all the case with all random bullshit that shows up on Facebook and YouTube. Those are most often than not ads full of toxic subtleties like unreasonable standards of living, body image and success.
It is more push pull thing. - pull request for relavant ads, when I actively searching for something (and a search engine would be better). - push request for ads that is random. If I see something I like I'll click it.
If you didn’t have ads, your dentist would have told you about electric toothbrushes.
That being said I dislike tracking not because I might get manipulated - I also prefer relevant ads. I dislike the fact that they can better target vulnerable groups - like depressed people with addictive personalities and gaming - this is the majority of app stores profit, I would bet it's a huge ad% as well - mobile gaming is basically milking people with low impulse control and nothing better to do with their time. It's just like those scamming telemarketing scum targeting old people