• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 15, 2011

According to the Business Information Network, total ad pages in business-to-business publications fell about 3.1% last year, from 627,871 in 2009 to 608,530 in 2010, as total ad revenue slipped 1.3%, from roughly $7.6 billion to $7.5 billion.

While these losses might not seem like cause for celebration, they are far smaller than the hit B2B took in 2009, when ad pages plunged 28.6%, shedding 244,030 pages, and total revenues plunged 24%, shedding $2.4 billion.

What's more, this time around there was actually some unambiguous good news as 2010 ended: Ad pages rose 1.4% in December to 46,082, while total ad revenues for the month increased 1.9% to $582 million.

Still, the news for 2010 was grim, with just three out of 22 publication categories tracked by BIN showing any real improvement: ad pages in automotive B2B pubs increased 9.3% to 30,001; miscellaneous pubs increased 7.3% to 11,478; and agriculture crept up 1.6% to 14,352. Several categories were basically flat with increases of less than 1%, including health care (0.3%) and banking, finance and insurance (0.05%).

In December, ad page performance by category was generally better, with 13 out of 22 categories showing increases (and 11 of these growing more than 1%). Automotive and miscellaneous pubs fared well in the last month of 2010, with increases of 23% and 30%, respectively. Even bigger gains were seen in the transportation and logistics category, up 33% in December.