I suspect there's a lot more subversive ad content on TikTok -- influencers who are paid or gifted by advertisers to namedrop or show a product in a post that TikTok recommends to millions. The "ad" label feels inherently dirty, and people tend to tune out. But if an influencer sips a coke in a video, without even an explicit mention of the brand, I'm sure a lot of people start craving coke.
I'm sure subversive ads happen, but in my experience people are pretty straightforward about marking posts as paid.
Then, there's also a lot of small and medium sized manufacturers/artists where their whole channel is showing off their stuff. Kind of ad-like, but quality tends to be good and it doesn't feel sneaky like subtle product placement. Ex. there's a chinese factory that manufactures polycarbonate dome houses, they'll post montages of their domes, nicely decorated in beautiful locations. I think the product is cool, so I intentionally follow and consume their 'ad' content.
I've seen people claim that they show a variable amount of ads depending on the user, which I imagine would be based on your clickthrough rate or other metrics. The ratio between ads and content also seems to vary over time for me so I feel there's some form of optimization happening
