July 30, 2018 | Contributed by: Courtney Dobson
Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.
Automated Google Ads Won’t Solve the Challenge of Ad Creative (July 30, 2018)
LSA Insider: “Earlier this month, Google introduced “responsive search ads” which automate the search campaign optimization process using machine learning. Google takes up to 15 ad headlines and 4 description lines testing various combinations to identify the strongest ad creative for a given search query.”
New Tech Adoption Index Podcast: “Age is a Moving Target” (July 30, 2018)
LSA Insider: “The Tech Adoption Index‘s survey research has consistently found that younger business decision makers are far more likely to want to use apps to run their businesses that older decision-makers.”
Bing Ads rolls out Target CPA & Maximize Conversions bidding strategies (July 30, 2018)
Search Engine Land: “A campaign only needs a minimum of 15 conversions within the past 30 days to be eligible for either of the new bidding strategies.”
Google’s Path to Becoming the Transaction Layer of the Web (July 30, 2018)
Street Fight: “Google’s been trying its best to answer questions directly on-SERP since the early days of the Knowledge Graph, and in local at least, “answering questions” frequently means putting you in touch with a business.”
Smart Speaker Owners Starting to Default to Their Devices For Audio (July 30, 2018)
Marketing Charts: “Streaming music is one of the most common uses of Smart Speakers, and there’s evidence now that Smart Speaker owners are beginning to default to their devices for all their audio needs.”
Google Has the Most Intelligent Digital Assistant (July 27, 2018)
Search Engine Journal: “Google Assistant is the most accurate smartphone digital assistant, beating Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft Cortana. A report released this week from Loup Ventures contains data from a digital assistant test, which measures how well the four competitors answered a series of 800 queries.”
Facebook reports on both views and clicks of ads taken within the attribution window. Remember that Facebook attributions are for the date the ad was viewed or clicked, not the date the conversion took place.
Now that you understand how attribution works, here’s how to start tracking attributing actions taken on your website to your Facebook ads.
You also need to add code to your website so Facebook can recognize when visitors take certain actions (called event tracking). To illustrate, by installing an event pixel on your “Thank you for purchasing” page, Facebook can determine if a purchaser has viewed one of your ads and if a sale can be attributed to that ad.
You can choose from a number of events to track. I recommend adding the Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout, Purchase, and Viewed Content events. (Page views are included as part of the pixel base code.)
For each event, you can set parameters to generate the code you need. In the example below, you want to install a pixel for the Purchase event with a conversion value of $10.
Once you’ve set your parameters, paste the code into your website pages.
A few hours after setting up the tracking, check that the number of Facebook pixel fires matches what has been recorded in your conversion tracking. It’s important to make this data check for the current day and not for previous days.
To check the number of Facebook pixel fires, open 
You can then see data for each of the event pixels you’ve added. At this point, nothing has been attributed, so simply make sure the number of purchases in the pixel manager line up with your actual number of overall purchases.
If your pixel data and sales data don’t match, your pixel probably isn’t tracking correctly. If you have issues, use the 
In the Attribution section on the right side of the page, click Edit. Then drag the slider to select your preferred click window and view window. When you’re done, click Save Changes.
Be aware that when you change your attribution window, the default conversion window for any future ads you place will be as closely aligned to your selected attribution window as possible. If you don’t want this default, you can manually change your conversion window as well.
Next, click the Columns drop-down menu and select Customize Columns.
In the Customize Columns window, click Comparing Windows in the lower-right corner.
In the Comparing Attribution Windows box that pops up, select the attribution windows you want to analyze. Then click the blue Apply button.
After you click Apply, the new attribution columns will appear in your Ads Manager and you’ll be able to see the conversion results from the different windows you selected.
While you can assume that some purchases will be made immediately post-click, it’s not uncommon for reporting discrepancies to arise due to purchases made days or weeks later.
Here are some other key points about this attribution model that will help you understand where the report data comes from:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on 
Instagram notes that you’ll only see status updates for people who follow you or have connected with you in Direct. Users also have the option to disable this alert.
In 2011, when YouTube live video was released, Dusty was quick to begin using it. However, the software and systems were limited. You could click a button to go live, but you couldn’t set up events or plan your live stream. Justin TV, which is now Twitch, was first to the live-streaming market, and Dusty also tried Google Hangouts.
Although Dusty’s early work in live video was mostly dabbling, in late 2013 and 2014, he began to see live streaming as important to the future of video. YouTube significantly improved its live streaming so it’s now actually in the live-streaming game.
Since starting his business, Dusty has created 700 YouTube videos and more than 100 streams on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and other platforms.
Listen to the show to hear why the original name of Dusty’s YouTube channel didn’t work.
Tips for Starting a Live Show on YouTube
When you want to start a live show, you can use the same tools to live-stream on any platform, whether that’s Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, or elsewhere. Most people live-stream via their mobile devices. They simply tap the Live button on whatever platform they’re using. Few people use tools like 
Even with a more sophisticated setup that includes OBS, you can complete the setup in 30 minutes to an hour. After you have a YouTube channel, you download OBS, which is free. Then you open YouTube’s Creator Studio, and on the Live Streaming tab, the on-screen instructions walk you through the setup process. From there, you can set up your first event or live stream.
I ask about Dusty’s show for 
Dusty and I then talk about how live streaming boosts your exposure on the YouTube platform. Because watch time is an important metric for the YouTube algorithm, live streams can help your visibility because they can boost your video watch time.
For instance, Dusty’s live streams go for 2 to 2.5 hours. YouTube counts the time people watch his live stream toward his channel. Because live streams tend to be long, they can have a long watch time and thus tend to appear in related search results.
Dusty has found that watch time is much more important than the number of channel subscribers you have, which is a vanity metric. When Dusty started live streaming on his personal channel about a year ago, he began to lose subscribers. However, his views per day and per month increased by almost 20%. Also, although his ad revenue is pennies, it increased by about 18%.
By tracking these metrics, Dusty learned that some of his YouTube subscribers weren’t fans of his twice-weekly live streams. However, people who watch his videos become the fan base that he wants (and that most businesses and YouTubers want). These fans not only watch, but also subscribe and click the bell icon when they’re notified he uploaded a video or is live on his channel.
Dusty’s last tip is to reassure people who are afraid to appear on-camera. For most people, this fear is the biggest barrier to entry. When he coaches people in live streaming, he emphasizes that the more you do it, the better you’ll get, just like with anything else. He encourages people to stop waiting, because while you wait, more people join your industry and the competition increases.
Even today, Dusty makes mistakes, which is simply part of live streaming. For example, he mistakenly went live on the TubeBuddy channel while he was creating an OBS tutorial. Several people from the team messaged him to alert him to the mistake. Although Dusty was embarrassed, mistakes like this allow people to see your real, human side.
If you want to do a test run with live video, you can’t prevent YouTube from sharing your live stream, but you can delete your live video as soon as you’re done. YouTube processes a live video and uploads it just like a normal video. To delete the video, select it in your video manager, click Delete, and it’s gone forever.
Listen to the show to hear my thoughts on the expectations viewers bring to recorded versus live video.
How to Use OBS
For a live show on YouTube, your software is your home base. Dusty uses OBS, which is free and available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Software like OBS enables you to share your video feed and audio with YouTube (or Facebook, Twitch, and other platforms). For Dusty, OBS makes live streaming much easier because the features are robust.
OBS works a little differently depending on your operating system. New feature sets tend to appear in the Windows version first, but the macOS and Linux versions always catch up. Also, the Mac version isn’t as intuitive to use as the Windows version. If you need help getting started, Dusty and other YouTubers have great tutorials that show you how to use OBS from start to finish.
To help people new to OBS understand how it works, Dusty starts by explaining some key terms. In OBS, a scene pulls together all of the sources you want to share. Within a scene, you can include a number of what OBS calls sources, which are what people see and hear. Your sources can include a webcam, mic audio, computer audio, your computer screen, text, images, and more.
You save different scenes to reflect the content you share during your live show on YouTube. To illustrate, one of Dusty’s main OBS scenes includes a video capture device (which is his main webcam), a screenshot of his desktop, and a slideshow that includes a couple of rotating images. After you set up a scene in OBS, it’s saved until you change it.
After you set up several scenes, you can transition from one scene to another with one click in OBS. On the Scene Transitions tab, you also choose whether the transition is a cut, a fade, or something else that provides a visual cue you’re changing scenes, which makes the change smoother and more professional.
You can also switch scenes with an external device that’s connected to your computer and has buttons you press to change scenes. Dusty uses an 
In OBS, you can program a switcher to anything, such as change cameras or play sound effects. On Dusty’s Stream Deck, each button has a miniature LED screen, so you can add a PNG image to each button that reminds you what you programmed it to do. The Elgato Stream Deck costs about $150, and you don’t need to purchase additional software to make it work with OBS.
To connect your OBS setup with YouTube (or another platform), you need a stream key, which is a code you copy from YouTube and enter into OBS so it can stream to your channel. On YouTube, your stream key appears in the Live Streaming section of Creator Studio. Because a stream key can be hard to find, Dusty made videos that explain how to find the key in 
Because Dusty uses Stream Deck to transition between scenes, the change from one scene to the next is smooth, and the stream looks professional.
Listen to the show for Dusty’s prediction about OBS support for Instagram TV and Snapchat.
Video Quality
For a live stream, you need to balance video quality with internet speed. For most live streams, you set up OBS to stream at a resolution of 1080p, which you do in the video settings.
In OBS, your canvas resolution reflects the resolution of your desktop monitor. The output, or scaled, resolution is what you set to 1080p. Then, no matter the resolution of your monitor or camera, it’s all downscaled to 1080p. To visualize this, Dusty has a nice LG monitor and a 
Conversely, you don’t need high-end hardware. For instance, if you have an older laptop or camera, and a decent Internet connection, you can still stream a live show on YouTube. You might have to lower the bit rate, which will affect your resolution and the video quality that the viewer sees. As with high-resolution video, simply run tests to find the best bit rate and resolution that doesn’t drop frames.
Dusty recommends investing in a camera other than the one that’s built into your laptop or desktop computer. To make these cameras fit in a computer, the lens has to be small, which degrades the video quality. However, the 
Another midlevel option is a quality lapel mic. Dusty recommends 
OBS also allows you to 
While people are commenting, Dusty quickly transitions to the topic. This approach is helpful for people who watch the replay because they don’t have to fast-forward through your interactions. However, YouTube will show replay viewers the comments as they happened during the live stream so any interactions you have will make sense.
To transition to the topic, Dusty says something like, “Today we’re going to be talking about A/B testing thumbnails using the TubeBuddy tool.” He may show three or four slides he’s prepared that provide visual context for the topic. As the stream continues and he keeps talking about the topic, viewers hopefully begin asking questions in the chat.
If you don’t get any questions or only have one or two viewers who don’t interact, your prepared content helps you move forward with the live stream. You don’t want to say, “Oh, none of you are talking or responding to me so I’m ending the stream.” When you keep going, you improve your live-streaming skills and eventually attract more people.
For instance, many Twitch streamers have told Dusty they talked to themselves and their dog for the first 3 months. If you’re new to streaming or don’t have an audience coming from elsewhere, you have to be okay with that. Building a viewing audience can be difficult.
To end the stream, Dusty shares his live stream call to action. He might say, “I’ll be live-streaming every Thursday on my YouTube channel at 5 PM Eastern Standard Time.” This tells viewers your stream is like a TV show they can expect on a certain day and time.
Also, let people know where they can find you, and give them food for thought or ask a question. If the topic is A/B testing YouTube thumbnails, you might ask, “What do you think are the best ways to do this?” Then people interact with the video even after you publish it. Unless the video is truly awful, Dusty recommends publishing the video so it gets even more traction over time.
Listen to the show to hear Dusty share more about the benefits of having a topic.
To use Easil, you create an account and use the app within your desktop browser. To access images you’ve created, you can log in and your assets are saved in your account.
The free version of Easil is for individuals and limits the types of files you can download. For example, with the free version, you can’t download a GIF or PDF. The Plus service costs $7.50 per month, and the Edge service costs $59 per month. With the paid versions, you can store your own branding elements and fonts with the service, access additional templates, and more.
Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Easil works for you.
