Smart mattresses know when you are having sex. Apple Health can predict when you are going to menstruate. Alexa knows when you are congested. And most of us are okay with that because we live in a brave new world; in exchange for valuable services, we have been engaging in online data-sharing behavior for years. When Amazon and Zappos first launched, it seemed weird to share credit card info online to buy a book or pair of shoes. Now, it’s commonplace, and people are sharing even more personal data for personalized experiences and products as retailers and brands are adopting new technologies to create hyper-personalized experiences for consumers. Hyper-Personalization Can’t Exist without PrivacyWhile consumer expectations for extremely personalized experiences have dramatically grown in recent years, privacy awareness has grown and tech companies and regulators are limiting data access, causing marketers to seek explicit user-permissioned data instead of inferred data. Inferred and passively collected data, which is referred to as first-party data (FPD) if collected directly, or third-party data if bought from another source, includes user behaviors such as digital interactions and purchase history. It is passively collected by cookies and often used in shady and unclear ways. Accordingly, in March,Google announced that it will no longer support third-party cookies and will stop tracking an individual’s browser history altogether through its Chrome browser. After Apple released its iOS 14.5 update in April, which includes the ability to stop apps from tracking your activity for ad targeting purposes,only 4% of iOS users in the US opted to let apps track them.