No. Targeted advertisements and AI-powered recommender systems are distinct technologies that are frequently conflated. Many common ad formats - such as abandoned cart retargeting - rely on simple rule-based heuristics rather than machine learning. Ads displayed on news and media sites are typically auctioned through AdTech platforms based on context and user profiles, not generated by a recommender system. For product teams, this distinction is operationally important: deploying a recommendation system is a different technical and ethical undertaking than running targeted ad campaigns, and the two should not be governed by the same assumptions.