Online marketing takes it to the next level. A cataloger doesn't even know if you looked at his catalog or just threw it in the trash. That's a whole new thing. If they knew how long I looked at a page and if they knew what pages I looked at, they'd have a lot better idea of what my interests are. Businesses are unlikely to stop these practices.
Chances are it's only going to become more pervasive.
Those that do stop these personalization strategies, or never adopt them at all, won't survive. They definitely will not succeed. Customers simply will not tolerate it. In online commerce, the customer owns the relationship. But the business owns the data.