The cleanest fix with no symlinks at all. Instead of fighting the symlink restriction, reconfigure Laravel to store and serve files directly from the public/ folder:

'public' => [
    'driver' => 'local',
    'root'   => public_path('storage'), // physically inside /public/storage
    'url'    => env('APP_URL').'/storage',
    'visibility' => 'public',
    'throw'  => false,
],

2. Manually create the public/storage/ folder (and public/storage/ads/content/) via FTP/cPanel File Manager.

3. Re-upload (or move) your existing images from storage/app/public/ads/content/ into public/storage/ads/content/.

No symlink needed. asset('storage/ads/content/image.jpg') and Storage::url('ads/content/image.jpg') will now resolve correctly.