Apple vs ad-tech is a really interesting battle. It shows the immense power Apple has in the consumer market today, where they can affect some of the largest businesses in the US unilaterally. Meta is in a very tricky position in that unless they put up an actual paywall users don’t really have any incentive to allow tracking. But putting up a paywall introduces a lot of friction, not to mention the adverse selection…
The idea of buying something based on an advertisement and not a need is foreign to me. What is a kind of ad that you consider to be “relevant”? I just block all of them so I might just not be aware of the potential.
It's usually more that the ad results in someone buying something they were already planning to buy from you instead of someone else. There's pretty much 3 types of online advertising, Intent based where you show an add when someone is actively searching for a place to buy the thing, remarketing where you show an add because you were able to detect they were shopping for it recently, and then the window shopping ones which just show you things you might be interested in (these are the lowest converting) Online ads objectively work though. Online ads basically drive the revenue of millions of small and medium sized businesses.