I get that it's always be about money in the end but I understand this sub-thread to be a bit more specific: Is there an ad sales platform run by Apple where your Benjamins have influence on the search ranking in the App Store? I and many other people here are not talking about things that are clearly ads (like a "featured" result or the ads shown by google and other search engines).

The App Store is an ad platform [1]. App developers are bidding on those search keywords.

[1] https://ads.apple.com/app-store/best-practices/keywords