I believe what you describe, is typical marketing via whatsapp or facebook, or google, where our searches follow us around, and when we walk into a mall, we are advertised things we recently searched. This is pretty common, across services owned by a given company. One reason I use Google and Facebook as little as possible, because they follow me everywhere.
Unfortunately, using a VPN will no protect you from Google following your searches, because they have a cookie on your browser and they know who you are because you are logged in...
So there are many forms of privacy intrusion on the web/internet, and we have really only scratched the surface today.
The issues I am talking about, revolve around our ISP or Telecom provider, changing what we see from the website we are attempting to browse. This is something like "double intrusion" on my privacy. Now BOTH my ISP, and the site I am visiting, are invading my privacy and showing me ads.
It looks to me like ISPs in USA have both monopoly in their given areas, and no shame...