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

The Death of the SMB Website Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (May 7, 2019)
LSA Insider: “A number of people in the local SEO community have argued that GMB (and Facebook) make the SMB website a thing of the past — except perhaps as a “data hub.” And while it’s true that Google, Facebook, Yelp and other consumer destinations are typically the first consumer point of contact with small businesses, a new survey from BrightLocal shows that SMB websites are far from irrelevant.”

Will SaaS Swallow Everything? (May 7, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Some of us may remember eagerly waiting for the current issue of Sports Illustrated or People as part of a monthly subscription. Others may look back to a time when kids would knock on doors to peddle magazines to win prizes or support school trips. Now we have subscriptions for virtually everything, from the highly tangible (Blue Apron meal kits) to the virtual (cloud storage, Office365, WiFi, etc.). So why has the subscription model become so much a part of our lives?”

Facebook gives small businesses new advertising and engagement tools (May 7, 2019)
Marketing Land: “The newly launched Automated Ads platform will create up to six versions of an ad and offer targeting recommendations based on the company’s Page.”

Google Search experiments with showing less relevant search results when requested (May 7, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “Google has confirmed they are running a “narrow experiment” where they will ask the searcher if they want to show search results that may not be as relevant as they may expect. Google will show a notice in the search results that reads, “Hmm… the results for your search don’t seem very relevant.” You can then click a button to “see results anyway” to load the search results.”

Study: Voice Assistants Far From Hot Marketplace For Buying (May 6, 2019)
MediaPost: “Some shoppers like to get information about consumer goods from Alexa and the Google Home voice assistant. But when they get down to buying, those shoppers tend to go elsewhere.”