>It's in your TV shows, your news articles, your Instagram feed, your word of mouth, your everything unless you are in the forest
I think I, and some decent percentage of HN readers, may kind of be "in the forest". I don't watch TV, I don't read news articles, I've never had an Instagram account or any kind of social media account (besides more "pseudonymous" social media like HN and reddit), I have comprehensive ad blockers, etc.
I also don't really buy products. I buy food, maybe I'll upgrade to a new laptop or phone every 4 - 5 years, but otherwise I don't think I really "consume" new things.
The only thing I can think of that ads have consciously made me do is pay to get rid of them. For example, I pay for YouTube Premium so I can never see ads. (Ad blocking gets tough for mobile devices and casting to other screens.) They got me there, because I watch a lot of YouTube (which I acknowledge is kind of "the new TV") and in some ways it's the best $12/month I've ever spent. It doesn't cover video makers including sponsored content, but I use crowdsourced browser extensions to identify and skip those.
The great misunderstanding of this industry is that what ads you see are just as important as the ads you don’t see, which allows for profit maximization.
In your circumstance, it may be true that bank transactions are farmed and analyzed to be additive to data gathering on the web, which in turn is additive to the offline data gathering offered by various companies. Every transaction made is analyzed for location, merchant, purchase category, amount, date & time, and more.
Most of the other commenters who are claiming and linking to articles that ads don’t work aren’t in the industry. This is an important distinction because what we’re talking about here are the machines that crunch all this data are considered trade secrets and/or intellectual property. Also, slightly off topic, but it’s important to understand that ads != marketing. Ads are a child component of marketing. When you look at the overall function of marketing (of which product management is a discipline, no matter how desperately some attempt to align it to technology), then consider how much of a factor data analysis and operationalization of data is a driver of success for Fortune 500 companies. Almost any company in consumer technology (e.g. FAANG), consumer healthcare (CVS), telecommunications (AT&T), FMCG or retail (Walmart, Costco), and retail banking (Chase, Wells Fargo) are using these techniques to build better products, sharpen communications, and win new customers.