I mean, ads work same way those obnoxious Mr Beast faces in thumbnails work: I never click on any video like that, but they obviously work for attracting a general public. It's even kind of funny how aggressively the algorithm tries to push them to me: if I were to anthropomorphize it, I'd say it's palpable its desperation to drag me to a popular cluster

So, "ads work" doesn't mean they will work for everyone at the individual level or won't have the opposite effect for some.