What's frivolous about a wallet or a sweater? Ultimately, all your hard-earned income is to make your life easier via goods and services, some of which may be frivolous. If you can't trust yourself not to make all frivolous purchases, that's a problem you can try to solve on your own.

How many wallets or sweaters does one need? That is the reason I included the word "ultimately" in my comment

I'm not arguing we don't need to buy anything ever. I'm arguing most ads are either pushing stuff you don't really need 99% of the time or selling outright junk. And let's not get into how close some ads are to plainly false advertising (I'm looking at you, wellness / nutrition)

Sounds like you are experiencing poorly targeted ads if 99% of yours aren't things you need :)

Question. If your ads were perfectly targeted in that 100% of advertised products were something that you're interested in, is that not ideal? Isn't that what companies like Google and Facebook are trying to do? Wouldn't you be happier if you didn't get the Wellness / Nutrition / Viagra ads?

Interested isn't a synonym for need. If you are "interested" in junk food, ads for it aren't something to you "need."

Is there no such thing as a win-win? If the business makes money off of a sale and the consumer gets a product they actually wanted?

Or is the default mode of operation always the consumer losing and the business winning?

If I actually wanted the product, I probably didn’t need the ad. I just needed to know about it in a very factual manner

Hard disagree.

You may want a THING, but you don't know about a particular brand or style of said THING. Just by making you aware of them can be a win win.

Say you've been researching "THINGS" for a couple weeks and narrowed it down to 2 brands. An Ad pops for a brand you'd never heard of. Naturally you check it out, only to find out its better than either of the options you were previously considering.

I trust myself to find better products than what random ads will suggest. In my experience, that holds true. I hardly ever purchase anything from "new" brands except for niche products but ofc YMMV

There's so much noise online now, ads are necessity for me to eventually find something I like.

As an example, a couple of months ago I was searching for some new summer outfits. Went through Google, Reddit, various clothing blogs, catalogs, etc. but didn't find a lot that I liked. After a week more of targeted ads on Instagram, I was finally able to discover brands that fit my tastes.

Unless I'm buying something well-defined like a TV or Airpods, passive exposure via targeted ads has been one of the best ways for me to find something worth purchasing.

Sometimes ads do that. I recently had a purchase that I got a lot of value off of based on an Instagram ad to my partner. I would not have known about the product otherwise.

The issue is "sometimes" probably amounts to ~1% of the time, based on my made up anecdotal observations.

"frivolous goods"

Sure, if the good or service is actually frivolous, but what about the case where the human is actively searching for some good or service that offer some actual value?