It absolutely makes sense to me, OP is describing their experience installing new apps on a new phone. Someone searching up Spotify because they know they want it will be reminded "hey, lots of people are using TikTok on their phones too" or "hey, you had TikTok on your last device, hit that button to install it after Spotify." Especially since you can just hit the install button from the search pane.
Is the Apple community always this way? I came to love Apple products but the community is a piece of work, it's like nothing can be criticized and everything is perfect as it is.
I do agree that they should clearly mark it as an ad, though, that's very important. And strange that they don't, I don't think they'd earn much less that way.
And as I said, I think ads in general are a nuisance and my position is that they shouldn't be allowed anywhere. If the official raison d'être of the market economy is that the better products will win out, allowing ads distorts that. Ads lead to a situation where the company with the best marketing team wins. End of rant. And don't even get me started on negative externalities.