the ads only appear in the "Promotions/Ads" tab, which is an email category for junk and ads. (ones that don't include any useful information but come from legitimate companies and don't qualify for the "Spam" tab)
It CAN be disabled (together with the whole sorting feature, which is spyware anyway (enabling it automatically grants google permission to look at your emails))
and also i think the decision to add their own ads there is actually pretty clever lol.
It would be clever if they fit and I might actually click on them.
Honestly, I did the whole “inbox filter tabs” thing a long time ago, and it was real useful before when I had a few spammy, usually “news letter” or “promotion” email that I might use. But at this point it’s just where the email I don’t really want but don’t want to deal with go to die.
I appreciate the info, though, and I’ve already turned it off, but I might just turn it back on because idgaf about the ads really since I barely look at that tab/section of my mail anyway. At his point, I’m prolly just going to go to proton mail for now and just update my email with my important contacts. I’ve been trying to get away from Google for a while, I just haven’t had the time to complete the transition on all services.