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?