When “selected for you” stopped working: how the personalization trend has changed
The phrase “selected especially for you” not long ago sounded like a compliment. It promised attention, individuality, and care in a world of mass solutions. Today, however, this formula increasingly evokes not interest but fatigue or indifference. Personalization seems to be everywhere — and at the same time, it no longer feels like a value.
To understand why this happened, it is important to look at personalization not as a technology, but as a cultural and marketing trend that has moved from novelty to norm — and in doing so, has begun to lose its emotional impact.
What personalization is — and why it once truly worked
Personalization emerged as a response to mass standardization. In a world of uniform products and messages, it signified a return of attention to the individual. In its early form, it was not a system but a gesture: conversation, clarification, observation, attention to context.
Even when personalization began to digitalize, its value did not lie in precision, but in the very fact of an individual approach. A recommendation appeared after an action or a request. It was not guaranteed — and precisely for that reason, it felt meaningful.
Personalization worked because it had a cost: time, involvement, and contact. It was read as the result of attention, not as an automatic system response.
How personalization changed its nature
With the development of algorithms and predictive models, personalization lost its event-like quality and became background infrastructure. It no longer waits for a request — it anticipates it. Recommendations appear before a person has articulated a desire; offers arrive without dialogue; “for you” becomes a default phrase rather than an exception.
The key shift lies not in quality, but in speed and inevitability. Where there was once choice, there is now prediction. Where there was a pause, there is a continuous flow.
This shift cannot be separated from the role of artificial intelligence, which has become the main accelerator of personalization. This transformation is explored in detail in How AI is changing the beauty world: a new era of care, skin, and self-perception, where it becomes clear how individualized approaches gradually turn into infrastructure.
Where the problem lies: why personalization no longer resonates
The problem with contemporary personalization is not that it lacks accuracy. On the contrary, it often works flawlessly. The problem is that it no longer feels like anything.
When an individual approach becomes automatic, it loses emotional weight. A person no longer feels seen — instead, they feel calculated. The sense of contact disappears, along with gratitude and trust.
Moreover, personalization begins to narrow the space of choice. Algorithms repeat what is familiar, reinforce existing patterns, and reduce randomness. Instead of discovery, a closed loop emerges: “I’m being shown what I already chose before.”
The result is a paradox: personalization works better than ever in formal terms, yet subjectively it no longer generates interest or desire to engage.
How this manifests in practice
This shift is clearly visible across different domains.
- In skincare, personalized routines increasingly appear overly complex and difficult to sustain.
- In shopping, recommendations rarely surprise or lead to genuine discovery.
- In content, feeds become predictable and monotonous.
- In travel, ready-made scenarios are less often perceived as inspiring.
In all these cases, the issue is not personalization itself, but its excessive presence.
Why the industry continues to intensify personalization
Many industries — beauty included — respond to fatigue from personalization in a paradoxical way: by investing in even deeper analysis and even more precise targeting. The prevailing assumption is that the problem lies in insufficient accuracy.
In reality, however, the issue is oversaturation with individualized messaging. This gap between industry optimism and lived user experience is clearly reflected in forecasts for the beauty industry in 2025, where it becomes evident that technological progress does not automatically translate into better connection.
Where we are heading: the new personalization trend
The emerging trend is not the rejection of personalization, but its limitation. Increasingly, people seek not “more precise,” but “less intense.” Not more recommendations, but more space for their own decisions.
A demand is forming for selective personalization — where individualized input is not imposed constantly, but appears when needed. Where systems do not anticipate desire, but wait for permission.
This shift is directly connected to the theme of digital fatigue, which we explore in more detail in Digital fatigue and care.
Why this matters for marketing
For marketing, this shift is fundamental. Personalization is no longer an unconditional advantage. An excess of individualized messages can be perceived as pressure rather than care.
The focus is moving from optimizing precision to experience quality: relevance, pauses, choice. Marketing that fails to account for fatigue from personalization risks losing connection even with its most “perfectly targeted” audience.
That is why personalization today ceases to be a gesture and becomes a tool — one that requires boundaries, context, and awareness. And this is one of the key trends shaping the current landscape.