Only way?? No.

No no absolutely not.

If/Since we are talking ideas and hypothetical, the preferred way would be for me to search for a product / indicate my need, and then marketplace to provide / compete for it.

The whole notion that advertiser must understand what I need, all the time, without my involvement knowledge or permission, then shove what it thinks I need up my throat constantly, is dystopian.

Basically, I think we are mixing up a pull paradigm to satisfy the consumer, with a push paradigm to satisfy the business. This is not to be naive about realities of world, business, saturated market, crappy products and differentiation, etc. But it peeves me when companies lack self awareness to be honest with themselves about which model is beneficial to which party.

Edit (and if we are going to talk about consumers being ignorant of the realities, let us not please pretend that the ultimate purpose of advertising is to perfectly satisfy a need with optimal product. Ultimate purpose of advertising is to make a sale. Sometimes, that sale is in fact optimal for the consumer. We can disagree how often that occurs as a percentage.)

Edit edit : the more I think the more I disagree. It's the word "optimal" that really bugs me - there's nothing optimal about modern online advertising. Clever, persistent, pervasive, desperate, obnoxious, hard work, devious, are some attributes that come to my mind. But it feels far from optimal - there's so much money and effort in this arms race which is increasingly hostile between an advertiser and consumer, and knowingly so; google and meta are 300 billion worth of not optimal :->