The ‘Creepy’ Line: How Marketing's Data Obsession Is Backfiring

My wife and I were talking over dinner last week about maybe getting a dog—just talking, no searches. The next morning, my Instagram feed was a wall of ads for chew toys, puppy training classes, and local breeders.

My first thought wasn’t, ‘How helpful!’ It was, ‘How did they know?’

The ‘Creepy’ Line: How Marketing's Data Obsession Is Backfiring

That’s the ‘creepy’ line. As marketers, we’ve spent the last decade trying to get as close to it as possible, armed with data and automation. We called it hyper-personalisation, and we saw it as the peak of smart marketing. The goal was to create ads so relevant and emails so timely they’d feel like a welcome suggestion from a friend.

But for a growing number of people, it doesn’t feel like a friend anymore. It feels like someone is listening in. And this feeling is sparking a quiet but powerful revolt against the brands that cross the line.

From Clever to Creepy: Where Personalisation Goes Wrong

Personalisation itself isn't the problem. A recommendation for a book by an author you love is great. The issue is the unsettling intensity and the sheer volume of data being collected, often without our full understanding.

• The relentless retargeting. You look at one pair of red running shoes on one website, and suddenly, every corner of the internet is trying to sell you those exact shoes for weeks. It stops feeling like a helpful reminder and starts feeling like digital stalking.

  
  

• The feeling someone is listening. The puppy example is a common one. You talk about a holiday destination and see ads for it later. You search a sensitive health query and are bombarded with related products. It feels intrusive because it is.

  
  

• The eerily accurate suggestion. Sometimes a product recommendation is so specific it makes you stop and wonder, ‘What else do they know about me?’

  
  

A recent Cisco survey put a number on this feeling: 63% of people now find this level of ad personalisation "creepy." More importantly for us, 79% said they would abandon a brand over privacy concerns. That’s not a rounding error; it’s a business risk.

Of course, this isn't new. We should have learned our lesson from the famous Target debacle years ago, when their analysts figured out how to predict a shopper's pregnancy from her buying habits—sometimes before she'd even told her family. The backlash was a warning shot about the difference between being clever with data and being invasive.

The Backlash Is Real (And It Has Tools)

This isn’t just a feeling; it’s driving action. People are actively taking back control.

• Ad blockers are now standard for a huge portion of internet users.

  
  

• Privacy-focused browsers like Brave and search engines like DuckDuckGo are gaining traction precisely because their core promise is not to track you.

  
  

• Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature, which forced apps to ask for permission to track users, was a landmark event. The vast majority of users said no.

  
  

The message from the public is clear: the convenience of a slightly more relevant ad is no longer worth the price of feeling watched.

So, Do We Give Up on Personalisation?

No. But we have to fundamentally rethink our approach. The game is no longer about how much data you can collect, but how much trust you can earn. Here’s how smart brands are adapting:

1. Stop Hiding Behind Jargon (Be Transparent). Tell people in plain English what you collect and why. Apple’s privacy settings are a good model—they make the choice simple and understandable. If you can't explain the benefit to the user, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

   
   

2. Make the Data Trade Worthwhile (Offer Real Value). If you are asking for someone's data, give them something genuinely useful in return. Not just a 10% off coupon, but perhaps exclusive content, early access, or a tool that solves a real problem for them.

   
   

3. Focus on Cohorts, Not Individuals. Instead of tracking every single digital footstep, focus on understanding trends within anonymous groups. Tools like Google Analytics 4 are already pushing us in this direction, moving away from individual user tracking towards event-based measurement.

   
   

4. Give Them the Keys (Put People in Control). Make your privacy and cookie settings easy to find and simple to manage. When people feel they have control, trust follows. The companies facing the biggest fines, like Meta, are often those accused of making these controls confusing on purpose.

   
   

5. Market to the Moment, Not the Person. Sometimes, the old ways are the best. Contextual advertising—showing ads based on the content someone is currently looking at—is often just as effective as behavioural tracking, and far less intrusive.

   
   

The New Rule: Respect Before Reach

For years, the marketer's goal was to achieve a ‘segment of one’. We now know that the ‘segment of one’ is often just a person who feels like they're being watched.

The days of trying to know everything about everyone are ending, not because the technology can’t do it, but because people are rejecting the social contract it implies. The future of smart, sustainable marketing isn't about invasive knowledge. It’s about earning the right to be helpful, with your customers' full and informed permission. The brands that master this respect will be the ones that win.