Well, they keep pushing the Creator Bundle when I open up the Numbers.app I bought bundled with the system. Perhaps they are implying creative bookkeeping?

I open settings on my iPhone (settings!) and it says "Don't Miss 3 Free Months of Arcade" and a misleading notification red circle icon.

First... the comment was about the Mac.

Second... I just opened settings on my iPhone and not only didn't see any ad, but not even a place to put an ad. Where in the UI would an ad appear?

They absolutely do. If you don't have a paid iCloud account, you get spammed urging you to upgrade for example. I really don't know why you feel so comfortable just blatanly lying when this is easily verifiable.

I don't have a paid account and don't get spammed. I don't know why you weren't able to specify WHERE you see all this "spam."