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

SaaS for SMBs: PR Is the Same, but Valuations Have Radically Changed (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “I saw an ad this morning for SurePayroll, which triggered me to learn more about the company. I was intrigued because while I had heard of SurePayroll, I had not realized it was part of the larger, more established small business payroll company Paychex. I discovered that SurePayroll was acquired in 2010 by Paychex for around $115 million.”

Google SERP Survey: Younger Users Rely on Snippets, Rich Answers More (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “A new survey from Path Interactive, (n=1,400 mostly US adults), published on the Moz blog, explored how users interact today with various features of the Google SERP. The TL;DR version is: most user attention and clicks still focus on organic results, but features such as snippets and the Knowledge Panel are causing more zero-click results, especially among younger users.”

Kohl’s 1,100 Stores Become Amazon ‘Return Centers’ (April 24, 2019)
LSA Insider: “Yesterday traditional retailer Kohl’s said it will accept returns for Amazon products at all of its stores. The policy will commence in July. The company has more than 1,100 retail locations in the US.”

Twitter’s 18% YoY ad revenue gains show marketers investing more on the platform (April 23, 2019)
MarTech Today: “Twitter saw an 18% increase in ad revenue year-over-year, generating $679 million during the first quart of 2019 according to its earnings report released on Tuesday. Total revenue was also up 18% year-over-year at $787 million.”

The time has come to optimize for IRLs rather than URLs (April 23, 2019)
Search Engine Land: “Drive-to-store strategies have reached a tipping point where they can play a significant role in improving performance of online marketing due to more reliable tracking methods.”