Thursday, April 18, 2024

The S&P 500's recent slump feels worse than it is. Here's some market perspective

Every weekday, the Investing Club releases the Homestretch; an actionable afternoon update just in time for the last hour of trading.

New YouTube Shorts Ad Opportunities For Brands

Google unveils new YouTube Shorts ad products and creative strategies as the short-form video platform grows.

  • Google launched new YouTube Shorts ad opportunities for brands.
  • Google claims its “ABCD” framework can boost Shorts ad performance.
  • YouTube Shorts’ growing audience offers potential for innovative brand connections.

'Only thought process before coming to field is...': Pant

The T20 World Cup is around the corner and Rishabh Pant is striving to be the best version of himself, and the latest proof of that is his brilliant all-round display in Delhi Capitals' six-wicket victory over Gujarat Titans in the IPL on Wednesday.

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

How To Adjust Your Data Collection Strategy

As a marketer, customer data is essentially your bread and butter – and if your strategy is heavily reliant on third-party data, you’re in for quite an awakening this year.

With Google Chrome already starting to phase out third-party cookies (with full implementation scheduled for third quarter 2024), it’s time to start rethinking your approach and strategizing for the impending changes.

That’s where we come in.

On May 1, we’re hosting a live webinar with experts from CallRail and Workshop Digital to help you navigate the challenges in a post-third-party cookie world.

Join us as we do a deep dive into the different types of cookies (first-party, third-party, etc.) and what they mean for marketers like you.

Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail, and Andrew Miller, Co-Founder of Workshop Digital, will introduce innovative data collection solutions to ensure your marketing tactics are primed for success in this new era.

Key takeaways from this webinar:

  • Impact on Current Marketing Strategies: The death of third-party cookies will fundamentally alter how we track user behavior online. Therefore, prioritizing first-party data collection and exploring alternative targeting methods will be crucial to campaign success, moving forward.
  • Preparing for Change: Learn what you should be doing to prepare for Google Chrome’s upcoming phase-out of third-party cookies. Start by conducting a comprehensive audit of your current data collection practices and identifying ways to adjust.
  • Strategies for Success & Diversifying Your Data: Embracing marketing tools and platforms that prioritize zero- or first-party data collection is key to future-proofing your marketing strategies. These tools enable you to directly capture and leverage valuable customer information without relying on third-party insights.

If you’re an agency or SMB marketer looking to stay ahead of the curve, you won’t want to miss this webinar.

Sign up now and get the expert insights you need to adapt your data collection strategies and embrace the future of data-driven marketing.

Plus, you’ll get the chance to ask Ryan and Andrew your most pressing questions, following the presentation.

And if you can’t join us live, don’t worry. Just register here and we’ll send you a recording after the webinar.

Google Search & Maps Get Upgrades For Greener Travel

Google announced updates to its Maps and Search products on Monday aimed at helping users find and choose more sustainable transportation options over gas-powered vehicles.

James Byers, Google Search’s Group Product Manager, states:

“When it comes to traveling and commuting, we want people to have the right information to make more sustainable choices.”

Eco-Friendly Route Suggestions

A smartphone displaying Google Maps navigation centered on Paris, with several greener travel routes and estimated times to a destination marked on the screen.Screenshot from: blog.google/products/search/, April 2024.

If travel times are comparable, one of Google Maps’ key new features will be the provision of transit and walking route suggestions alongside driving routes.

This update will be rolled out in over 15 major cities worldwide in the coming weeks, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, and Sydney.

Train & Bus Route Information

A smartphone displaying a Google Search for greener travel options for train tickets from Boston to Philadelphia with several travel options listed according to time and price.

Google is expanding its ability to find long-distance train and bus routes through search.

Users searching queries like “Boston to Philadelphia train” will see schedules, prices, and direct links to book tickets on the results page.

Train route information will now be available for 38 countries, while long-distance bus routes will initially be added for 15 countries.

When users search for flights on Google’s dedicated Flight tool, they will see train route suggestions as an alternative for applicable routes.

“So it’s easy to find the more sustainable option no matter where you begin your search,” Byers stated.

Highlighting Lower-Emission Flights

In cases where flying remains the best option, Google will show you the environmental impact.

Byers explains:

“These estimates are powered by the Travel Impact Model (TIM), a methodology we published in 2022 for predicting per-passenger flight emissions.

To make this information even more accessible, TIM estimates are now also available through a developer API that allows any app or website to display flight emissions.”

Google is also releasing a Google Sheets add-on and online calculator to make the emissions estimates more widely available.

Looking Ahead

While Byers acknowledged “there’s still a long road ahead when it comes to sustainable travel,” he expressed hope that “today’s updates will give more people the information they need to choose lower-carbon alternatives.”

The new features come as consumers increasingly seek ways to make sustainable choices. By integrating these metrics into its flagship maps and travel tools, Google is nudging users towards greener options.


Featured Image: Screenshot from blog.google/products/search/, April 2024.

Wix Partners Can Now Sell Templates in Wix Marketplace

Wix announced that Wix Studio agency and enterprise partners can now sell templates in the Wix Marketplace, opening up a new way for partners to earn more through Wix and for Wix publishers to gain access to professionally designed templates.

Wix Studio Partners

Wix Studio is a platform for agencies and enterprise users who manage multiple sites, providing a streamlined workspace for managing client sites all in one space. The Wix Studio platform provides the AI-powered Studio Editor for creating websites that makes it easy for teams to collaborate as well design websites in a code-free workspace that also allows for custom CSS.

Wix Marketplace Expansion

Wix partners can already sell their services such as web design, SEO, logo and graphic design through the Marketplace. Now they are able to sell their templates to users directly through the marketplace which can also help partners develop leads.

Templates Must Pass Quality Check

A benefit of the Marketplace offers pre-screened professionals and all templates must pass a review for quality and usability before being listed.

Wix team members review templates for:

  • Design & Aesthetics
  • Layout & structure
  • Template Exclusivity
  • Uniqueness

According to Michal Bignitz, VP of Partners at Wix:

“Expanding the Wix Marketplace to include template sales not only empowers our Partners to unlock additional revenue streams and strengthen their presence within the Wix community but also fosters a thriving ecosystem of creativity and innovation. It’s an exciting opportunity for Partners to collaborate with and benefit from other experts, as we’ve seen with beautifully crafted templates combining design and dev skills.

“This fosters a thriving ecosystem of creativity and innovation and puts us one step closer to the goal we envision for Studio to become the place where experts in web design, development, user experience, marketing, SEO, and more can monetize their creations and collaborate.”

Read more about how to sell templates:

Sell Wix Studio Templates

Brave Announces AI Search Engine

Brave announced their new privacy-focused AI search engine called Answer with AI that works with its own search index of billions of websites. Their current search engine already serves 10 billion search queries per year which means that Brave’s AI-powered search engine is now one of the largest AI search engines online.

Many in the search marketing and ecommerce communities have expressed anxiety about the future of the web because of AI search engines. Brave’s AI search engine still shows links and most importantly it does not by default answer commercial or transactional queries with AI, which should be good news for SEOs and online businesses. Brave values the web ecosystem and will be monitoring website visit patterns.

Search Engine Journal spoke with Josep M. Pujol, Chief of Search at Brave who answered questions about the search index, how it works with AI and most importantly, he shared what SEOs and business owners need to know in order to improve rankings.

Answer With AI Is Powered By Brave

Unlike other AI search solutions, Brave’s AI search engine is powered completely by its own search index of crawled and ranked websites. The entire underlying technology, from the search index to the Large Language Models (LLMs) and even the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology is all developed by Brave. This is especially good from a standpoint of privacy and it also makes the Brave search results unique, further distinguishing it from other me-too search engine alternatives.

Search Technology

The search engine itself is all done in-house. According to Josep M. Pujol, Chief of Search at Brave:

“We have query-time access to all our indexes, more than 20 billion pages, which means we are extracting arbitrary information in real-time (schemas, tables, snippets, descriptions, etc.). Also, we go very granular on what data to use, from whole paragraphs or texts on a page to single sentences or rows in a table.

Given that we have an entire search engine at our disposal, the focus is not on retrieval, but selection and ranking. Additionally, to pages in our index, we do have access to the same information used to rank, such as scores, popularity, etc. This is vital to help select which sources are more relevant.”

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

The way the search engine works is it has a search index and large language models plus Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technology in between that keeps the answers fresh and fact-based. I asked about RAG and Josep confirmed that’s how it works.

He answered:

“You are correct that our new feature is using RAG. As a matter of fact, we’ve already been using this technique on our previous Summarizer feature released in March 2023. However, in this new feature, we are expanding both the quantity and quality of the data used in the content of the prompt.”

Large Language Models Used

I asked about the language models in use in the new AI search engine and how they’re deployed.

“Models are deployed on AWS p4 instances with VLLM.

We use a combination of Mixtral 8x7B and Mistral 7B as the main LLM model.

However, we also run multiple custom trained transformer models for auxiliary tasks such as semantic matching and question answering. Those models are much smaller due to strict latency requirements (10-20 ms).

Those auxiliary tasks are crucial for our feature, since those are the ones that do the selection of data that will end up being on the final LLM prompt; this data can be query-depending snippets of text, schemas, tabular data, or internal structured data coming from our rich snippets. It is not a matter of being able to retrieve a lot of data, but to select the candidates to be added to the prompt context.

For instance, the query “presidents of france by party” processes 220KB of raw data, including 462 rows selected from 47 tables, 7 schemas. The prompt size is around 6500 tokens, and the final response is a mere 876 bytes.

In short, one could say that with “Answer with AI” we go from 20 billion pages to a few thousand tokens.”

How AI Works With Local Search Results

I next asked about how the new search engine will surface local search. I asked Josep if he could share some scenarios and example queries where the AI answer engine will surface local businesses. For example, if I query for best burgers in San Francisco will the AI answer engine provide an answer for that and links to it? Will this be useful for people making business or vacation travel plans?

Josep answered:

“The Brave Search index has more than 1 billion location-based schemas, from which we can extract more than 100 million businesses and other points of interest.

Answer with AI is an umbrella term for Search + LLMs + multiple specialized machine learning models and services to retrieve, rank, clean, combine and represent information. We mention this because LLMs do not make all the decisions. As of now, we use them predominantly to synthesize unstructured and structured information, which happens in offline operations as well as in query-time ones.

Sometimes the end result feels very LLM-influenced (this is the case when we believe the answer to the user question is a single Point of Interest, e.g. “checkin faro cuisine”, and other times their work is more subtle (e.g.”best burgers sf”), generating a business description across different web references or consolidating a category for the business in a consistent taxonomy.”

Tips For Ranking Well

I next asked if using Schema.org structured data was useful for helping a site rank better in Brave and if he had any other tips for SEO and online businesses.

He answered:

“Definitely, we pay special attention to schema.org structured data when building the context of the LLM prompt. The best is to have structured data about their business (standard schemas from schema.org). The more comprehensive those schemas are, the more accurate the answer will be.

That said, our Answer with AI will be able to surface data about the business not in those schemas too, but it is always advisable to repeat information in different formats.

Some businesses only rely on aggregators (Yelp, Tripadvisor, Yellow Pages) for their business information. There are advantages to adding schemas to the business web site even if only for crawling bots.”

Plans For AI Search In The Brave Browser

Brave shared that at some point in the near future they will integrate the new AI search functionality directly in the Brave Browser.

Josep explained:

“We plan to integrate the AI answer engine with Brave Leo (the AI assistant embedded in the Brave browser) very soon. Users will have the option to send the answer to Leo and continue the session there.”

Other Facts

Brave’s announcement also shared these facts about the new search engine:

“Brave Search’s generative answers are not just text. The deep integration between the index and model makes it possible for us to combine online, contextual, named entities enrichments (a process that adds more context to a person, place, or thing) as the answer is generated. This means that answers combine generative text with other media types, including informational cards and images.

The Brave Search answer engine can even combine data from the index and geo local results to provide rich information on points of interest. To date, the Brave Search index has more than 1 billion location-based schemas, from which we can extract more than 100 million businesses and other points of interest. These listings—larger than any public dataset—mean the answer engine can provide rich, instant results for points of interest all over the world.”

Try out the new AI search at http://search.brave.com/

WhatsApp New Update: WhatsApp is going to launch Dhansu features, click here for more information

WhatsApp New Update: WhatsApp is a platform through which you can send the required document or important details. Nowadays WhatsApp is used by almost number of users. Whatsapp also often gets new updates through which users are tried to get the benefit of amazing features easily. Recently there is a new update of WhatsApp which users are going to get better facilities and features through the update, today we will tell you about the new update of WhatsApp through this article, if you know about it.

WhatsApp New Update. WhatsApp New Update 2024

WhatsApp is used not only in India but worldwide in large numbers WhatsApp is used more than any other social media platform Through WhatsApp you can connect with people in few seconds Through video calling you can communicate with people for hours Apart from this WhatsApp status There are many other features that you can find in WhatsApp but today we are going to tell you about one such feature which has been recently launched by WhatsApp after a new update. These features are very beneficial. Let’s tell you about these new features.

Know what is the new update of WhatsApp?

  • Thus, WhatsApp can be used easily, you will also be using WhatsApp, you will know all the features of WhatsApp.
  • But you might know the new feature which has been launched now. The new feature is related to WhatsApp status.
  • Let us tell you that WhatsApp is doing a special idea through which you can go directly to Instagram story through WhatsApp status.
  • That is, WhatsApp status has been updated to increase media sharing, whatever you put in WhatsApp status will be directly posted on Instagram story and shared there.
  • You don’t need to put a separate story on Instagram, now the post you put in WhatsApp status will be shared directly on Instagram.
  • Easily first you need to connect whatsapp if you use instagram and whatsapp on same number then connect easily

8th Pay Commission: The big decision of the government regarding the pay hike of all government employees

Other information on new features of WhatsApp

This new sharing features is very useful as WhatsApp is frequently updating users to enjoy better and more amazing facilities and services. You can show WhatsApp post directly on Instagram with just one click, you don’t need to post on Instagram separately. Every post you put will be shared on Instagram. Now this is a very useful feature for many real users who don’t know about this new feature.

These features are very useful for people who use social media more, especially WhatsApp Instagram. If this new feature is not visible on your WhatsApp, then you have to go to the play store and update the WhatsApp application once and then check again. If you feel any kind of untruth and feel difficulty then you have to contact whatsapp help.

Amitabh Bachchan will be given the Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar Award Amitabh Bachchan to be given Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar Award: Randeep Hooda and A.R. Rahman will also be honoured, with a ceremony to be held on April 24

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Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan will be honored with the Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar Award this year. Actor Randeep Hooda and Musician A.R. Rehman is also among the honored celebrities. The award ceremony will be held on April 24.

Recently, the Mangeshkar family has officially announced the names of the celebrities who will receive this award. 81-year-old Amitabh Bachchan, 47-year-old Randeep Hooda and 57-year-old A.R. Apart from Rahman, the awardees also include Marathi actor Ashok Saraf, Padmini Kolhapuri, singer Rupkumar Rathore, actor Atul Parchure. The event is going to be held on 24th April at Dinanath Mangeshkar Theatre, Vileparle, Mumbai.

Music director Hridaynath Mangeshkar has announced the award in a press conference. His son Adinath Mangeshkar and Usha Mangeshkar (Lata Mangeshkar’s sister) were also present at the conference.

The award started in honor of Lata Mangeshkar

The Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar Award was established by the Dinanath Mangeshkar Smriti Pratishthan in honor of Swarkokila Lata Mangeshkar. A total of 212 people have been honored with this award in the last 34 years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and legendary singer Asha Bhosle are also among the recipients of the award.

Talking about the work front, Amitabh Bachchan will soon be seen in ‘Kalki 2898 AD’ and ‘The Umesh Chronicle’. Apart from this, he will also be seen in ‘Brahmastra 2’. Randeep Hooda is currently in the limelight after being seen in the film ‘Swatantrya Veer Savarkar’. Released on March 22, the film is directed by Randeep along with the lead role.

Vicky Kaushal spotted in casual smart look, Kartik Aryan spotted outside gym, Pooja Hegde spotted with family | Celebs spotted: Vicky Kaushal spotted in casual smart look, Kartik Aryan spotted outside gym, Pooja Hegde spotted with family

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Vicky Kaushal was spotted at the Mumbai airport on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, he was seen in a casual smart look. Vicki is working on many projects these days. On the work front, Vicky is currently shooting for ‘Chhava’. Rashmika Mandana will be seen opposite him in this. Apart from this, he will also be seen in the film ‘Mere Mehboob Mere Sanam’. Apart from Vicky, Karisma Kapoor was also seen at the airport. Karisma was seen in the recently released film ‘Murder Mubarak’.

Kartik Aryan was spotted outside a gym in Bandra, Mumbai. Karthik was seen sitting in a car wearing a gym outfit. Talking about Karthik’s work front, he was last seen in the movie ‘Satyaprem Ki Katha’. He will be seen in ‘Chandu Champion’ in the coming days. He also has ‘Bhool Bhulaiya 3’. At the same time, Malaika Arora was also spotted in a gym outfit. Let us tell you that Malaika is very fit even at the age of 50. Actress Pooja Hegde was also spotted in Bandra with her family. The actress went for lunch with her family. Meanwhile, she was seen in a casual look wearing a t-shirt and jeans.

Vicky Kaushal was seen in a smart casual look

Vicky Kaushal was seen in a smart casual look

Kartik Aryan was spotted in a gym outfit

Kartik Aryan was spotted in a gym outfit

Malaika Arora was seen outside the gym.

Malaika Arora was seen outside the gym.

Sonali Bendre's denim look

Sonali Bendre’s denim look

Pooja Hegde seen with family

Pooja Hegde seen with family

Shriya Pilgaonkar was seen in a designer outfit

Shriya Pilgaonkar was seen in a designer outfit

Karisma Kapoor was also spotted at the airport

Karisma Kapoor was also spotted at the airport

Pregnancy Fake News Hurts | Pregnancy fake news hurt: Parineeti Chopra says, 'I lost many projects; 15 kg weight gain for 'Chamkila'

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Bollywood actress Parineeti Chopra is currently in the limelight due to her film ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’. The biopic of singer Amar Singh Chamkila also stars Parineeti Chopra in the lead role along with Diljit Dosanjh. She played Chamkila’s wife Amarjot Kaur in the film released on 12 April 2024.

Parineeti has gained 15 kg weight for this role. In an interview, he has talked about his physical transformation.

Married to Imtiaz Ali

Married to Imtiaz Ali

Pregnancy rumors hurt: Marriage

Parineeti said, ‘When I signed the film ‘Chamkila’, many people associated with the industry warned me that if I put on weight for the role, my career might end. I took inspiration from Vidya Balan who gained weight for ‘The Dirty Picture’. Imtiaz sir asked me to gain 15 kg and also said that I will not have any makeup on my face. I had to look my worst in ‘Chamkila’ and I told Imtiaz sir, I will do it. I was shooting for ‘Chamkila’ for the last two years and during this time I lost many projects. I was looking bad and meanwhile there were rumors about my pregnancy and plastic surgery.’

Stay away from the red carpet
Parineeti revealed in an interview that due to her increased weight, she had reduced her public appearances. Parineeti said, ‘I used to avoid going to red carpet events. Fashion was a distant thing because I didn’t look like I used to. I’m still not the same.’

Marriage during gym session

Marriage during gym session

Parineeti is trying to lose weight
Recently, Parineeti also said on social media that now she is busy reducing her increased weight. Last year her routine was to gain weight only by eating junk food but now that the film has released the new story is completely opposite. Now she is constantly working out in the gym to look as good as she does, Parineeti said, ‘It is very difficult but I enjoyed what I did for the roles of Amarjot and Imtiaz sir.’

Fees for actresses were low in the 90s Fees for actresses were low in the 90s: Raveena Tandon said, 'What a hero was paid for one film, a heroine was paid after doing 15-16 films'.

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Raveena Tandon, one of the hit actresses of the 90s, has spoken about her film career. In an interview to Indian Express, Raveena said that she later realized that she had been stereotyped in her career as actresses in those days had very few choices and did not have the freedom to choose anything of their choice.

Raveena has acted in many hit films including 'Mohra', 'Khiladio Ka Khiladi'

Raveena has acted in many hit films including ‘Mohra’, ‘Khiladio Ka Khiladi’

Raveena said, ‘Actresses used to lag behind in fees as well’

Raveena said, ‘When I started my career, there was a lot of stereotyping. We used to work not in one or two films but in 10-12 films at a time. At that time, there was an idea that if the film had a big director or a big star, the film would become a superhit. During that time there was not so much focus on selection.

Fees for actresses were not high in those days. Actresses had to do 15-16 films to earn as much as Hero earned from one film. There was no career planning then so it took us a long time to establish ourselves.’

Today’s actresses are in good shape: Raveena

Raveena further said that, ‘The condition of actresses today is not the same as before. Now female stars are in good shape. Now he is getting good roles at the beginning of his career. Now times have changed. Now after ‘Om Shanti Om’, Deepika Padukone gets a film like ‘Bajirao Mastani’ after five-six films, whereas in our times, a chance to act in such a film would come only after a long career or after 20 films. Now Alia Bhatt gets a chance to work in a directorial like Imtiaz Ali’s film ‘Highway’ right after ‘Student of the Year’. This is a great period.

Raveena in the movie 'Patna Shukla'.

Raveena in the movie ‘Patna Shukla’.

Ravi was seen in the film ‘Patna Shukla’
Raveena’s previous film ‘Patna Shukla’ released on March 29. The film was released on the OTT platform Hotstar. Ravi was seen in the role of a lawyer in the film. Earlier, Ravi was seen in the web series ‘Karma Calling’ and in the coming days she also has projects like Binoy Gandhi’s Ghudchadi and the multi-starrer film ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.

Bigg Boss OTT-3 preparations begin | Bigg Boss OTT-3 preparations begin: Salman Khan to host this season, security beefed up at Galaxy apartment due to firing

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After the successful season ‘Bigg Boss OTT-2’, preparations for its third season have started. There were reports that Salman Khan will not be hosting the next season after the threats and shootings at Galaxy Apartments, however now there are reports that Salman will be the host of the show.

According to a recent ANI report, Salman Khan has agreed for the show. The report states that, Are you missing the Bigg Boss drama? If yes, then Salman Khan is ready to host Bigg Boss OTT.

On April 14, firing took place outside Salman Khan’s house
On April 14, two bikers opened fire at Salman Khan’s Bandra home, Galaxy Apartments. Since then their security has been increased. Lawrence Bishnoi’s group has claimed responsibility for firing at Salman’s house.

The post of Bigg Boss OTT-3 was removed after the announcement
Recently, Bigg Boss OTT 3 was announced from the official Instagram handle of Colors channel. The post said, Ready for fun and drama? Let us know in the comments who you want to see in the upcoming season of Bigg Boss OTT 3.

The post was deleted by the channel soon after this announcement. There was speculation that this season would be cancelled.

Salman replaced Karan Johar
The first season of Bigg Boss OTT was hosted by Karan Johar. The winner of the first season was Divya Agarwal. After Karan, Salman hosted the second season of the show. The second season trophy was won by Elvish Yadav.