Data are the new oil. And companies are using that. Sooner or latter mentality about it will change and people will use products and services where they dont give out any data. At this point of time there is lite demand fro that. But that will change. Probably already in this decade. If not this then next.
I hope you have heard the term "BIG DATA"
There is no privacy left and all our activity online and offline are traced and recorded in the form of data. This data can be used for good things like targeted marketing or it can be misused at any level.
I wouldn't call targeted marketing such a great thing, looking at some products just once will likely keep them in your recommendation list for a long time. The rise of a lot of different VPN companies shows in my opinion that the is a huge demand for privacy in the internet. People are willing to pay for such privacy and the more our data is getting exploited the higher the demand for security from such marketing companies.
Not sure when everyone started to believe the VPN company marketing tactics. If you have a paid VPN, yes you have the best shot of having privacy on the internet, but even with that -- if you're just logging into all of the social media accounts / other sites like normal you'll still be tracked by companies. Maybe some guy at the internet Cafe won't be able to steal your bank password, but the big companies of Google, Facebook, Netflix, and so on will still be collecting TONS AND TONS of data on you.
So yeah.