Coupons.com –  which allows consumers to find coupons they want and print them out at home, download them to mobile devices, or transfer them to stores’ loyalty card accounts — says its digital coupon business grew 170 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, in terms of the volume of savings.

Meanwhile, a white paper released by the Newspaper Association of America and Kannon Consulting says newspaper inserts are in trouble, with big retailers like Sears demanding double-digit rate cuts and the CMO of J.C. Penney’s expressing concern that prepaid inserts don’t reach as many younger consumers. Media Daily News quotes from an analysis of the months-old proprietary white paper by the Poynter Institute’s Rick Edmonds.

The report, says Edmonds,  “warned that inserts, which account for half of retail advertising, are ‘under siege.’ The industry, notoriously pokey in providing return-on-investment metrics or in facilitating ease of placement, needs to tone up its act in a hurry, the report suggests.”

A Scarborough Research report last August said about 7 percent of U.S. households get their coupons from Web sites and about 8 percent get them via text messages or e-mail. In December, a report said spending on newspaper inserts was up 11.2 percent for the year.

In November, The News & Observer’s VP for Display Advertising cited a focus on selling pre-prints as one factor in the decision to discontinue publication of the company’s bi-monthly lifestyle magazine.