National Newspaper Association President Elizabeth K. Parker, co-publisher of Recorder Community Newspapers, Stirling, NJ, today praised the decision of new Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe and the USPS Board of Governors to present a modified postage increase in 2011. USPS on Jan. 13 filed its request for new rates with the Postal Regulatory Commission, saying it would hold average rate increases to around 1.7 percent.
Newspaper Advertising Trend Improves
With the gradual improvement in the economic conditions, positive trends are emerging in both print and digital advertising driven by an improving outlook for advertiser spending. Consequently, the rate of decline in advertising revenue is decelerating. Zacks Industry Outlook
Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites
Google said Thursday that it had made a major change to its algorithm in an effort to improve the rankings of high-quality Web sites in its search results - and to reduce the visibility of low-quality sites. While the company did not say so explicitly, the change appears to be directed in part at so-called content farms like eHow and Answerbag, that generate articles based on popular search queries so they will rise to the top of the rankings and attract clicks.
Google has been facing criticism from some users for allowing articles that aren't useful to appear prominently in search results. That has now changed, according to the company. NYT Article
Report: Facebook ad performance is abysmal
From Adweek
Facebook's advertising business is soaring. Yet the performance of the average Facebook ad is abysmal.
At least that's according to a new report issued last month by the analytics firm Webtrends, which recently examined 11,000 different Facebook ad campaigns which totaled 4.5 billion impressions. Webtrends found that in 2009 the average clickthrough rate on Facebook was 0.063%. That figure slipped to 0.051% in 2010.
Because of that decline, CPMs on Facebook have crept upward, going from 17 cents in 2009 to 25 cents by last year.
The only ad categories that were able to crack 0.1% clickthrough rates were "tabloids and blogs" (0.165%) and "media and entertainment" (0.154%). The worst performing ad category on Facebook, per Webtrends, was health care, which generated 0.011% clickthrough rates and an average cost-per-click of $1.27.
