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

Facebook Simplifying Ad Management Tools for ‘Everyone’ (February 26, 2018)
LSA Insider: “In an effort to simplify the advertising experience, Facebook announced that it is combining its two primary ad tools: Power Editor and Ads Manager.”

6 smart e-commerce lessons to boost local business (February 26, 2018)
Search Engine Land: “With more and more people window shopping on a small screen, contributor Wesley Young shares six ways to use online tactics to drive customers to an offline store.”

People Are Talking About You: The Hidden Value of User-Generated Content (February 26, 2018)
Street Fight: “Though reviews may contain bias of various kinds, they are still the best source you can find of detailed feedback from real customers.”

Are keywords still relevant to SEO in 2018? (February 26, 2018)
Search Engine Watch: “This balancing act can take time and experience. You don’t want to include keywords for the sake of it, but you don’t want to make Google’s life overly hard. Experiment, analyse, iterate.”

Advertising in the digital age: why online-first is the future (February 25, 2018)
The Next Web: “For advertisers, reaching a targeted audience for cheaper and thus seeing a bigger return on investment is essentially a dream come true.”

10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Marketing (February 25, 2018)
Forbes: “Measuring marketing’s many contributions to revenue growth is becoming more accurate and real-time thanks to analytics and machine learning.”

Consumers Pleased With Smart Speakers, But Aren’t Really Asking Much (February 23, 2018)
MediaPost: “As consumers get more accustomed to using their smart speakers, the tasks will likely get more difficult, and may affect overall satisfaction rates.”