Yes, those are absolutely ads, they're explicitly labelled as such. And they're not very subtle, there's another double-tall row of them every other page when scrolling through the Play Store. There are also ads for other apps on every app page, and ads for search results. The search result ads are egregious - e.g. if I search for a major bank app, the first several results are for competing banks, they're barely differentiated from the legitimate results, and they're explicitly not what I'm looking for. I feel like I'm at an awful bazaar where I know what I want but slimy merchants keep yelling at me and getting in my way to shove their junk in my face.
I'd pay $10/m just to get rid of ads on the Play Store and Google Maps.
> The only videos are after clicking an app and then they have never ever started playing automatically.
There's a Play Store setting for controlling autoplay of videos.
> Neither my OnePlus or Google phones have it.
Play Store is a Google App, phone manufacturer has no impact.