This happened to my father while I was around during the beginning of the COVID lock down. He searched for an Apple support number and was served a targeted ad for a phishing site. Because of the change in search a few years prior, ads now look very much like search results compared to the obvious visual distinction back in the Don't-Be-Evil days. The ad was sufficiently targeted that it only showed up on his device for the search -- nobody else would see it.
Ironically today even network engineers of all people can't type speedtest.net without google's help. Set your search engine to wikipedia and see them struggle.
I feel like we lost the battle for any semblance of hope in matters of security when the URL bar blurred everything into search. There is simply no way to ensure that the browser does what one expects anymore.
Ephemeral ads are not a good thing.