How wired into your brain are these tech companies? Spotify's little holiday gift to us offers a clue.

Call it a holiday card from the music streaming company Spotify or call it marketing.

This time of year, Spotify compiles a personalized year in review of our listening habits for each user.

It's called Spotify wrapped, like apped present or wrapping up the year, throwing our personal data back at us as a marketing tactic that's becoming more common.

Marketplace's Kristen Schwab reports.

Marcus Collins listened to a lot of boys to men this year, like a lot a lot.

I'm in the top 0.6% of global fandom for Boys to Men. They are the goats.

Collins, who's a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, got this stat from his

Spotify wrapped. Of course, he shared his results on social media. He says Spotify

has found a way to make marketing not feel like marketing. The best advertisers don't talk about

the features and benefits. Instead, they find you inside the product. More brands are leveraging

user data, AI, and social media to create customized marketing.

Think a food delivery app, giving you a coupon for a sandwich shop you just walked past,

or TikTok and Instagram filters that turn your face into a Lego figure.

Shilpa V. Rao, a marketing professor at Virginia Tech, says these ads can border on feeling too personal.

Some people hate it. Some people love it. But pretty much that is where everything is headed.

And it's effective. Rau didn't get a Spotify wrapped. Her account is too new. She's kind of disappointed.

It is some sort of a fear of missing out.

FOMO is a real marketing tactic, one that can coax people into paying for a subscription.

In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace.

There's news today. Netflix has the winning bid for the studios and streaming of Warner Brothers Discovery,

$82 billion. Rival Bitters Comcast and Paramount may try to challenge this, and federal

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