Making money by commercializing customer data (and the insights gleaned from it) isn’t a new idea. Credit-reporting agencies, which tell lenders whether a would-be borrower is likely to repay loans, have been around formore than a century, and grocery stores havesold shopping data (collected via their loyalty programs) for decades. In the digital age companies are learning more about consumers by following their online behavior—the products they buy, the websites they visit, the reviews and comments they leave, and so on. Now AI is making it easier to analyze and gain insights from that information, increasing its value even more. And in an era of slower economic growth, companies are becoming more interested in finding ways to monetize this asset.