by: Alan D. Mutter | Newsosaur

The rapidly expanding adoption of mobile couponing is poised to become a major challenge to one of the most profitable and important revenue streams remaining for newspapers: preprint advertising circulars. 

The good news for publishers at the moment is that newspapers carry 90% of the printed coupons issued annually by consumer-products companies in the United States, according to a mid-2012 survey by NCH Marketing Services, a division of the Valassis direct-mail company that serves as a clearinghouse for many of the billions of coupons redeemed every year. NCH says 305 billion coupons were issued in 2012.