that's what causes the popups.
it should prohibit it outright, consent or not.
The adtech industry has, time and again, proven they cannot self-regulate to any decent capacity. At this point, the only reasonable course of action is to shackle them down with such heavy legislative burdens they're rendered de facto extinct.
I will not mourn their loss.
EU is first and foremost a capitalist economy which nevertheless tries to protect people from abuse. Who are they to forbid someone to collect data, and to someone to provide this data? Even things like quality surveys are collecting personal data.
However, adtech and tracking (also capitalists, (un)ironically) ruined everything for it for everyone.
For example, giving consent should be the same difficulty as denying it. So one click consent means there must be also one click non-consent. But this is policed very poorly.
I think they should just ban adtech altogether, at least any form of targeted advertising, individual pricing (which is already illegal in many EU countries) and ideally also deep market research.