It's partly to help raise awareness of this kind of advertising, and start maybe looking at its impact on the elections themselves. Also, if you are able to capture data from multiple feeds then you can also start to spot trends and maybe electioneering sheenanigans.
From the Guardian article [0]:
"It aims to show who campaigns are targeting, how much the parties are spending and will shed light on whether targeted adverts are crossing the boundary into 'fake news'."
Yes, currently the ad is intended for use during the UK general election. I believe there's a longer term plan which may include widening the scope if it goes well, and there's enough interest, etc.
No, the extension only extracts ad information from your Facebook timeline as you are reading it. Apart from the minimal information requested when you install the extension (which I believe you may be able to skip) they don't capture anything personally identifiable.
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From the Guardian article [0]:
"It aims to show who campaigns are targeting, how much the parties are spending and will shed light on whether targeted adverts are crossing the boundary into 'fake news'."
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/free-soft...