You'd think there'd be some "competitive advantage" to be had, but when their entire industry is built upon tracking and profiling everyone they possibly can, they'll do anything they can, fighting tooth-and-nail to the very end against any legislation that somehow interferes with their tracking, even if it means resorting to childish and petty temper tantrums that further enshittify the web. What little "competition" exists in that industry all fully believe that building massive profiles on everyone is the only way to make any money at advertising. They've been allowed to get away with it for so long that they can't even remember there was a time when tracking everyone all the time everywhere wasn't even a thing (and yet advertisers still managed to advertise back then, somehow)...

When GDPR was first going through the public circuit I remember reading the proposed laws and being pleasantly surprised to find that they specifically called out and forbade the likely workarounds, including the obnoxious banners we now see everywhere.

I would love to know what happened. Did the laws get "revised" to re-open the loophole? Was superseding legislation passed? Did the courts reject it? Are there enforcement issues?

All the sites that need advertising like that can just die off and leave the internet a better place.