You're right. What a ridiculous idea to force companies to make a profit from selling their actual product, instead of from selling their users' data to a middle-man that exploits it in perpetuity. Europe is doomed.
their actual product is attention grabbing
Ad-supported revenue is fine. Contextual advertising is fine. RTB without adequate consent is not fine.
Contextual advertising is fine. The advertising industry (even the web advertising industry; personally targeted advertising wasn't really a thing until sometime in the noughties) existed happily enough for a couple of centuries without personal targeting.