Apple is not stupid, so I guess their research shows that this is not a common enough sentiment that adding ads will measurably hamper sales.
To someone who loathes ads (like me), this is a tragedy.
I'd say this is testing waters, seeing how big backlash will be. The sad part may be they may be right and limited loss with power users will be outweighed by ads income. After all, ads are the sole revenue stream for giants like Google or Meta, too juicy to ignore where no other breakthrough is in sight.
People keep expecting Apple to be something else than a profit oriented company.
So far, the proportion of their revenue coming from ads is still lower than google by far, hence statistically I have less chances of being the product with them, hence I choose them.
I definitely don’t choose them because their products are better. The hardware and its software support duration, maybe, but the software is definitely worse than google’s, especially assistant and maps.