Any existing policy inevitably has a gray area, no matter how elaborate it is. That's okay if the author didn't cover corner cases in a short essay.
> You don't just magically know what to buy.
Knowing what you need is not magic. I don't remember much advertising lately that would tell me how a good can satisfy my existing needs. Mostly, they are trying to make me feel I need something I didn't need before
Knowing what you need is not magic, but knowing which products might satisfy it is not automatic. Advertising targeting, which people quite reasonably find intrusive, exists because advertisers desperately want to find people who may potentially want to buy their product.
Knowing what you need is easy. Knowing what you might want is far harder.
Would not search + first party description solve that? It’s easy to create a page “you have problem A? Try our product B”.
How is that not advertising?