The movement to spruce up and expand aging digital media continues. And with it, a "do-it-with-me' service model for digital marketing aimed at local small and mid-size businesses. Search engine marketing appears to provide the platform for the business model. While self-service platforms like Google AdWords and Bing Ads have proven that a do DIY model works, there are several gaps to bringing a DIWM concept to the masses. BIA/Kelsey identifies challenges in its new report, Optimizing Local Marketing: SMB Marketing Needs 'Do It With Me' Models.

The barrage of emails in consumer in-boxes force many to press the delete button after reading the subject line. L.A.-based ad agency LazBro, and email-acquisition firm Opt-Intelligence have built a platform for IBM Silverpop clients that provides an opt-in feature targeting emails to consumers who interact with the brand, even for the first time.

Toro, a company that helps developers promote their apps on Facebook, has been acquired by Google. The news was announced on the startup's Web site by the founders, who have begun to create a long list of acquired companies.

Delete. Sometimes we just want to remove our digital footprint from the Web. Wish it was that easy? Google apparently has begun to give us an option to delete some information. This feature doesn't compare with the "right to be forgotten" ruling in Europe, but it seems like a start. Google shows us how to delete domains from the Google Apps for Work service.

Apple ran the advertisement "Make A Film With iPad" during the Oscars Sunday, highlighting fifteen students from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts shooting, editing, coloring and scoring short films with the iPad. The audio in the background tied in excerpts from Martin Scorsese's commencement speech to the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Class of 2014.

Complex analytics platforms continue to transform into predictive machines that can forecast the outcome of everything from Super Bowl champs to presidential elections. Now the folks on the Oracle Data Cloud team think they know the winners for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Actor in the 2015 Academy Awards.

The Web is a pretty wild place, and the topic of the dark Web continues to draw attention. It may have begun last year with Memex, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) deep Web search engine project that law enforcement has been using for more than a year.

Yandex has filed an antitrust complaint with Russia's regulators to investigate the possible violations of antitrust laws against Google over search on Android. Russia's No. 1 search engine wants regulators to investigate Google's Android operating system and how the company bundles its search engine as the default on all Android devices. Android accounts for 86% of all smartphones sold in Russia today and with Google's search serves as the default on those devices.

Not all images in Google Shopping ads or online at retail Web sites look exactly like the physical product. Sometimes the descriptions are a bit off, omitting the complete truth about the material used to make the items. Python-print material vs. Python material makes a huge difference to consumers looking for the real deal, for instance. It happened once to me at Michael Kors during the time that Neiman Marcus ran its Web site. The missing word "print" didn't appear in the description, and there was no mention that merchants and manufacturers can't ship Python to California.

Home buyers are going mobile, pushing up revenue for companies like Zillow. During the company's Q4 2014 earnings, the company reported that visits to Zillow via a mobile device rose 57% year-over-year. In December 2014, 420 million homes were viewed on Zillow via a mobile device, which equates to 157 homes per second. Nearly two-thirds of Zillow's visits come from a mobile device, and on weekends the percentage rises to more than 70%.