3 charts for you today:
Third-party tracking cookies, which often "follow" internet users from website to website, are currently being phased out by Google Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, and this week Google went one step further promising not to replace third-party cookies with an equally invasive alternative.
No more hands in the cookie jar
The third-party cookie has been a core part of Google's advertising business for a long time and seeing as Alphabet (Google's parent company) made an astonishing $147bn in advertising revenue last year (80% of its total), it would be an unusual move for Google to do anything that would drastically diminish its ability to sell targeted ads.
So it's perhaps no surprise then that Google does have something in place to keep its ad business pumping, something they are calling the "Federated Learning of Cohorts", or FLoC if you want a new acronym to forget later.
Google says that FLoC "proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests... [which] effectively hides individuals “in the crowd”". Sounds good. Then comes the most telling line of all; Google's tests of FLoC reveal that "advertisers can expect to see at least 95% of the conversions per dollar spent when compared to cookie-based advertising". So a pretty good replacement then.
If FLoC can replace third-party cookies, deliver similar results for advertisers, and give users a little more privacy then it really is a win-win-win — and kudos to Google if so. If in practice it doesn't work as well as in theory, and the $150bn advertising juggernaut falters substantially, then Googlewill really have an ethical dilemma on its hands.
The Simpsons is heading for a 33rd and 34th season. The iconic animated comedy, which is already the longest running primetime scripted TV show in the US, will be airing its 700th episode on March 21st, more than 31 years since its first episode aired — all the way back in 1989.
The golden age is gone
Although its longevity is remarkable, the popularity of The Simpsons has declined substantially during its ~700 episodes. This chart, inspired by a great article from Todd Schneider from 2016, shows that back in its early seasons The Simpsons would regularly pull in 20 million households watching (back when Nielsen reported households, not viewers). Its most recent season is averaging closer to 2 million viewers.
It's important context to note that this chart for pretty much any longstanding TV show — including the most popular — would look quite similar. More choice, and the enormous cultural change from streaming, means that fewer people are likely to tune in at primetime to a traditional TV channel, regardless of what is being shown.
In the case of The Simpsons, data from IMDB does confirm that the lower viewership numbers have come with lower average scores in reviews as well. The Simpsons may have lost some of its early magic, but it's no easy feat to keep quality high for 32 years. If we're still making these charts in 2053, we'd be pretty proud too.
Last year one of the most optimistic stories of any was the global fall in CO2 emissions.
Unfortunately, the latest data out from the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirms what many have expected — that emissions are already rebounding as economic activity begins to resume around the world. Indeed, the IEA estimates that global emissions in December 2020 were actually ~2% higher than those from December 2019.
Looking back at the year as a whole, emissions did fall 10% in the US — but that wasn't the case for all major economies. The most notable exception was China, where emissions actually rose for the year, with 2020 emissions up 0.8%, or 75 million tonnes, relative to 2019.
The speed of vaccine development in the last year has proven just what science and technology are capable of when working almost exclusively on one enormous problem. That, if nothing else, should give us a little bit of optimism on climate change — a global problem with, arguably, just as much time pressure.
1) Baby boom, or baby bust? Interesting piece from the NYTimes on why the evidence increasingly suggests that there might be a sizable baby bust from the pandemic, with potentially 300,000 fewer births this year in the US than would usually be expected.
2) Square, the mobile payments company run by Jack Dorsey, has bought a majority stake in Tidal, the music streaming service founded by Jay-Z, for $297m.
3)Butterfly numbers have been falling at 1.6% a year in the western United States since 1977, according to researchers from the University of Nevada.
4) Stock markets slid again yesterday, after comments from Fed chair Jay Powell. The tech-heavy NASDAQ has felt the worst of the declines — the index is now down almost 10% relative to its peak in mid-February.
5) 96% of companies surveyed by Flatfile have said they've run into problems with data onboarding. If your business is one of the 96%, try Flatfile Portal.**
6) Netflix has launched "Fast Laughs" — a vertically oriented "TikTok-esque" feed of 15-45 second clips from Netflix shows.
**This is a sponsored snack.
