Yes true. If the service can be provided without collecting and processing certain data you can not coerce the user to "consent" to you doing so in order to access your service. E.g. the good old growth hack of collecting newsletter subscriptions by email-gating a "free e-book" behind a newsletter signup form.
There does seem to be a loophole for enforcing tracking ads as "legitimate interest" (i.e. not seeking consent) if you also offer a paid subscription without them, which is what a lot of German news sites seem to have shifted to. There was a recent court case in Germany however because a company got sued for not providing an option to not consent to everything that wasn't related to ads (e.g. analytics, third-party widgets and so on) and most sites seem to now provide granular controls even when they force ads if you don't want to pay. Note that they still have to lazy load the ads after consent is given in order to be compliant. I'm not sure if this way of forcing ads is compliant throughout the EU as it feels more of a gray area given that the site usually sends the full article and then gates it behind a consent modal on the client, i.e. there's no technical requirement to show the ads, just a sustainability one.
There does seem to be a loophole for enforcing tracking ads as "legitimate interest" (i.e. not seeking consent) if you also offer a paid subscription without them, which is what a lot of German news sites seem to have shifted to. There was a recent court case in Germany however because a company got sued for not providing an option to not consent to everything that wasn't related to ads (e.g. analytics, third-party widgets and so on) and most sites seem to now provide granular controls even when they force ads if you don't want to pay. Note that they still have to lazy load the ads after consent is given in order to be compliant. I'm not sure if this way of forcing ads is compliant throughout the EU as it feels more of a gray area given that the site usually sends the full article and then gates it behind a consent modal on the client, i.e. there's no technical requirement to show the ads, just a sustainability one.