I understand your thinking, but I have never felt that the "promoted result" in any search when shopping around inspired confidence in them being the best fit or value for me, even though they're technically a relevant result.

More directly: Someone paid to have them surface that result for me, instead of having me find them for being the best. I can understand the need to bypass the SEO arms race of yesteryear, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

It would be great if I was shown things "relevant to my interests". That's not what targeted ads are because ad placement depends on who is willing to pay the most, not on what optimally matches what I want. The most obvious example is search ads in the App Store that show you a competitor's product (or an outright scam) as an ad when searching for a specific app. Now extend that kind of dynamic to any other product category and you start to see the problem.