I have never in my several decades of life seen and ad for anything and thought "I need to get that".

I sincerely do not believe this. I suspect that you have a very specific definition of ad that is far narrower than I do, but I do not believe you never once saw a movie trailer and decided to go see the film, or saw a billboard or sign for a restaurant while out on vacation and decided to check it out. Or that you never went to the grocery store to pick up the steak that was on sale this week. Or that every single tech purchase you have ever made in your life was exclusively and solely on the word of mouth recommendation of your close friends, all of whom had previously purchased identical products with their own money.

Look I'm not saying you can't live a low ad lifestyle. I don't have cable or network TV and run ad-blockers on every device I own. And yet I can look around my home and see numerous products purchased at least in part due to an ad. The Retroid Pocket sitting on my table, the M series laptop sitting in front of me. The Sony TV across the room, the game consoles under it. Heck the dog at my feet was the one I adopted because I went to an adoption event being sponsored at a local business. Even when I'm seeking a specific product out and then seeking out information, I'm looking for reviews and a lot of those reviews are given sample/free product for the purposes of making their review. That's an ad. I might be able to place more trust in that review if the reviewer doesn't give the product manufacturer editorial control they way they'd have in a sponsorship, but you can be damn sure if sending free product to independent reviewers wasn't paying off in terms of higher sales, the manufacturer wouldn't be doing it.

Not even movie advertisements like trailers? Or job ads? Housing ads?

I've definitely investigated and eventually purchased things I first learned about through an advertisement.

Mind, usually that was from print ads in things like magazines/newspapers, the occasional direct mail ad like the old Fry's electronics mailer or movie trailers. Online ads are overwhelmingly ugly attention grabbers for things I have zero interest in or no time for when displayed.

I remember having that experience as a kid - seeing an ad for Action Man™ during my Saturday morning cartoon block, and feeling that I need that toy right now. My dad then explained to me that these advertisements are carefully crafted to elicit this response from kids, and that I should always think critically about the messaging in ads.