Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.

As Location-Based Marketing Matures, Has It Gotten Any More Accurate? (January 31, 2018)
GeoMarketing: “The role of location signals to power real-time ad targeting, social media analytics, and Connected Intelligence voice-activated assistants has become an integral part of all marketing.”

What’s Ahead for Marketers and Influencers in 2018? (January 31, 2018)
Adweek: “Brands must keep a keen eye out for trends and be ready to shift their strategies.”

Instagram now allows businesses to schedule their posts (January 31, 2018)
TechCrunch: “The change was introduced as part of a larger revamp of Instagram’s API platform that also included a plan to deprecate the older Instagram API Platform over the next two years.”

Digital Video Ad Revs Forecast To More Than Double On YouTube, Facebook (January 30, 2018)
MediaPost: “Advertising spend on YouTube and Facebook will hit $37 billion by 2022, up from an estimated $16 billion in 2017, according to Juniper Research.”

With Visibility Manager, MomentFeed Optimizes the Local Data Foundation (January 30, 2018)
Street Fight: “Visibility Manager will provide brand managers with data on the strength of each store’s digital presence across more than 310 network directories, maps, navigation systems, and websites.”

Inside Google’s new Search Console: What’s new, what’s the same, and what’s still to come? (January 30, 2018)
Search Engine Watch: “The new Search Console is still in beta, and Google says that it will continue to port features from the old Search Console to the new over the course of the coming year.”

How to use brand mentions for SEO, or the linkless future of link building (January 30, 2018)
Search Engine Land: “Links have long been the major ranking factor to optimize, but search engines may have just found a more accurate signal to rely on.”