According to a new Citibank / GfK Roper survey of 500 small business executives across the United States, 76% have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86% say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

According to the Direct Marketing Association's 2009-2010 "Power of Direct Marketing" report, direct marketing's slice of the total ad spending pie got larger in 2009, increasing from 52.7% of all ad spending to 54.3%. However, since total ad spending dropped to $275 billion from $319 million, the value of DM's slice dropped from $168.1 billion to $149.3 billion. That's an 11.2% drop in spending from $1.95 trillion in 2008 to a forecast $1.74 trillion this year.