Right, that’s “Amazon’s choice”/similar. Which isn’t dependent on tracking/personalization, it’s the same as super markets getting paid to put particular products in better locations. The ads I’m talking about are when I’m on a random website and I see sidebar ads for products totally unrelated to that page, but related to my interests. Voice-only folks are post-ad in that sense.
And the original comment was specifically about an “ad profile”, which only matters for personalized ads. Without personalized ads, the ad profile is meaningless, so getting one via voice devices is not all that valuable. (Again, for voice-only folks)
I was classifying all search result ordering manipulation as "amazons choice/similar", as they're all equivalent to a supermarket placing some products in desirable locations, and they all can not really make use of an "ad profile", as once the person is actively looking to buy a particular product, most of the work of traditional advertising has already happened.
This means the "ad profile" of folks who do not use screens and only interact with voice is relatively worthless: the best you can do is push them towards buying your brand when they're already looking for your product-class, and at that point the "ad profile" adds relatively little to the experience, probably just an idea of how much money you're willing to spend. Given Amazon doesn't currently adjust search results based on a prediction of how much you'll spend [1], this information is probably not that valuable.
Compare this to the value-add of traditional ad profiles: mine would say that I'm interested in, lets say, high end audio products, outdoor equipment, and dog products, which means anywhere I go online or on mobile apps I constantly get a barrage of ads for various products in these categories. If I see one I'm interested in, I'm likely to buy it right then and there. There's no voice-only equivalent of that, unless people start asking "tell me something I should buy" (Asking "tell me an item in {category} I should buy" is skipping over the ad profile)
All in all, this means folks without screens are post-ad: they will only be shown products they're already looking for (in adjusted order, sure), rather then being shown products they had no idea about but might be interested in. This is bad news for advertising firms and new product developers, though they probably weren't getting much money from these folks in the first place.
[1]: I only buy high-end audio products, I've bought many high-end audio products, and if I search "bookshelf speaker", I'll get cheap trash for the top results, telling me that Amazon is not interested in targeted whale-hunting, for whatever reason.
And the original comment was specifically about an “ad profile”, which only matters for personalized ads. Without personalized ads, the ad profile is meaningless, so getting one via voice devices is not all that valuable. (Again, for voice-only folks)