designing an experiment to test this would be quite easy.
ultimately your explanation could exist alongside audio snooping, perhaps even helping to resolve areas of ambiguity...
That is - it is possible that the reason you were discussing the topic is the same reason that advertisers were targeting that particular phrase at that time. The Frequency Illusion could explain why you noticed that particular ad and why you were surprised. Also you presumably discuss topics all the time that you don't see ads for, but the probability of seeing an ad for any of those topics is quite high (the birthday problem).
[0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/153166/what-is-t...