"The ad companies want our profiles by hook or crook, and they're getting VERY good at finding ways to sniff us out without having to ask. They're also probably much aware of laws and sovereignties, meaning any attempt to push would simply see them pack up and move someplace friendlier. It's not like they have a whole lot of physical real estate to move around, is there?"
Whether or not the ad companies are located somewhere legally accessible there are other entities at the ends of their chain who might not be so mobile.
In order to do any profiling they have to get access via the web sites. If a web site allows some profiling link to be installed on it I think it likely that the operator could be classed in the EU and the UK as a data controller and the hosting company could also be classified as a data processor. At the other end of the chain the company whose products or services are being advertised is also likely to be scooped up.
Where the web site is being run as the window on some business such as an estate agency or a car dealership they can hardly avoid having a legal presence in the countries in which they operate. The same applies to businesses placing adverts. A small business engaged in selling by post might be able to avoid these constraints; even so such a business with ambitions to grow might foresee the need to establish such a presence in the future.
Hosting companies, however, are likely to have interests in the EU and/or UK. Running a web site on Amazon's infrastructure? If they think they're likely to get roped into this you're going to find they are pretty insistent on what you can do in terms of placing trackers on your pages.
I think I can guess where Schrem's new organisation is going for its initial targets.