Business

Visa and Mastercard are pouring money into Africa. Visa and Mastercard benefit from growing the pie. It makes perfect sense that they are splurging money into a market as big and as potential as Africa. In fact, other companies should look into following the two networks.

What Happened to Our Ad-Free TV? Cables ran supreme not long ago, but people were sick of high prices and a lot of ads. Then came streaming. It provided flexibility, lower prices and virtually no ads. But what is old is new again. Streaming now is littered with ads. Executives’ usual excuses include “more investments into programming”, “consumers don’t hate ads. They just hate irrelevant ads”, “we stream ads far less than cables”. I think that all it takes for us to have ads-free content againt is one company willing to disrupt the market and investors focusing less on profitability.

Store Brands Are Filling Up More of Your Shopping Cart. I am afraid that this trend will persist for a while as there is no sign that inflation will subside. Hard discounters like Aldi will be popular. Store brands will continue to sell. National brands may struggle a bit to compete.

Klarna Marketing Chief Says AI Is Helping It Become ‘Brutally Efficient’. “The company announced Tuesday that it had cut sales and marketing spending by 11% in the first quarter of 2024 while increasing the number of campaigns and updating its collateral marketing materials more frequently. It attributed 37% of that reduction to AI, the equivalent of $10 million in annual savings. Using generative AI tools such as Midjourney and DALL-E saved the company $1.5 million on image production costs in the first quarter, Klarna added, while slashing its image development timeline to seven days from six weeks. Klarna also said it had decreased by 25% its spending on external marketing suppliers for tasks such as social media, translation and production.“

The QR Backlash Has Won. Restaurants Are Ditching Them for Good. I think diners will appreciate more photos on a menu, meaning that a digital menu is better than a printed one for restaurants. Easier management and maintenance. If a restaurant plans to change its menu quite often like twice or three times a year, I think using QR codes can lower the printing expense.

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

How Does the Stock Market Perform in an Election Year? I hope this serves as another reminder that it is less important to time the market than to continue to invest in an index regularly.

Cancer Is Capsizing Americans’ Finances. ‘I Was Losing Everything.’ Health is wealth. My personal approach to this is 1) look after my health as much as possible (diet, exercise, meditation); 2) save up money for rainy days; 3) think about moving somewhere when I am older that can offer affordable health care and plan accordingly; and 4) pray.

What does the public in six countries think of generative AI in news? There seems to be a big gap between the hype from the tech world on GenAI and how much it is used in real life. Tech executives can brag about putting AI in everything all they want. It doesn’t mean GenAI adds value to users’ life.

U.S tech giants are building dozens of data centers in Chile. Locals are fighting back. “On average, a small data center building that uses a regular water-based cooling system and consumes 1 megawatt requires about 25 million liters of water every year to keep its computers from overheating. Some of the world’s largest data centers require more than 100MW to operate. Chile has registered a national drought, with historically low levels of rain, since 2010.”

Stats

The share of homes without a mortgage is on the rise and currently sitting at 40%

72% of customers say they use a debit card at the point of sale

Office workers tripled their meeting time since 2020, according to Microsoft