My main field of study is statistics, and there's nothing strange going on there unless the ads are extremely specific.

If you think about a pink elephant plush toy driving a toy Tesla model X but nobody else in the world thinks about the same, then you've probably got mind reading going on.

Until then it's just the overwhelming power of massive amounts of data and fundamental statistical laws (or laws of nature).

Edit: Not saying the ability of modern data analysis and processing isn't terrifying, but it's not "direct" mind reading by any measure. It only works because there are trillions upon trillions of data points available to infer from.

For every individual you'll find an abundance of people that will help you to predict any individual within the group up to a certain margin of error. Just think of liberals for an extreme edge case, they're a complete hive mind. Know one, know all.

My main field of study is statistics, and there's nothing strange going on there unless the ads are extremely specific.

If you think about a pink elephant plush toy driving a toy Tesla model X but nobody else in the world thinks about the same, then you've probably got mind reading going on.

Until then it's just the overwhelming power of massive amounts of data and fundamental statistical laws (or laws of nature).