Since GDPR began to come into force, I've seen an increasing pivot from ad-based revenue models to subscription/pay per view based models, I imagine motivated in part by the fact that if you have to acquire non-implied consent, so you might as well force that friction point to fully onboard a user, and part as well by fears as to how targeted advertising will continue to provide a revenue source given the new requirements. It's fair to say that this may be an overreaction, but historically these sorts of experiments don't get reverted, once the infrastructure is in place. I personally do not find the benefits offered under GDPR to be worth losing what was previously a "relatively free" ecosystem. Others can disagree with whether they are OK with the prior state of affairs, but this is not the law I would have written to change it, and as I said before, a lot of my frustration comes in from having 0 say in the matter, (or deriving 0 benefit) yet being exposed to the friction of the legislation.
(One can also observe that this may serve as a regulatory moat protecting e.g. large ad networks that have enough scale to merit the overhead/costs of global compliance infrastructure, but not new startup networks. We've seen similar problems in recent HN writeups re: starting a bank; where something much more consensus, financial security, can still serve to overreach and serve incumbents more than it protects users.)
As a meta comment, I notice you are _very often_ present defending GDPR in threads where I've stayed quiet in the past; to the point that as someone who almost never notices names on this site, I've noticed yours before this interaction. Can I be curious about why you advocate this so comprehensively while also answering your question? (because, frankly, even the advocates I know personally agree that there are costs and risks involved, and that the letter of the law itself also left a lot up in the air)