SELLING PRIVACY: CASE STUDIES EXPOSING UNETHICAL DATA USE IN HYPER-PERSONALIZED ONLINE BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING

The advertising sector has seen a substantial transformation due to the swift development of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics. The capacity to provide highly customized content based on each user's unique behavior, interests, and digital footprints makes hyper-personalization stand out among these. This strategy boosts productivity and involvement, but it also brings up serious ethical issues, especially with regard to user privacy, informed permission, and data transparency. This study explores the effects of hyper-personalized Online behavioral advertising by analyzing a few case studies of well-known businesses, such as Amazon and Netflix, which highlight how invasive and opaque the underlying data harvesting methods are. These incidents show how advertisers can obtain a great deal of personal data, often without consumers' knowledge, which can cause unease and feelings of surveillance. The results point to an increasing need for ethical moderation in the use of customization technologies. To ensure that advertising stays courteous and doesn't undermine consumer trust, marketers are advised to take a more open and restrained approach to data utilization. Keywords: Online Advertising, Hyper-personalization, Online privacy ,case study approach, Digital marketing.