I cannot find any evidence of this. The only article I found even related to this was showing a feature where if you had the Siri suggestions widget then you might see an App Clip for a store nearby. It works like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62559071/how-to-add-appc...

The only other advertising system within iOS that I’m aware of is the App Store, both in recommendations and search, and of course, that Apple will advertise their own services for iCloud, Storage and so on.

Is Apple an advertising-based company? Not really. Are they marketing-driven? Absolutely. I think the difference is about user value and user impact.

Apple tends to go the Amazon route of trying to capture value from the interactions users might already do, though their iAds network from a decade ago did show an unsuccessful attempt to capture the in-app ad market.

But I can’t think of the last time I would have seen an “ad” in settings, though since App Clips appear in settings for up to 10 days once installed, I can see why some might think so.