In brief: Mailers got some good news this month when the Postal Regulatory Commission limited the USPS to a once-a-year rate increase for Market Dominant products through 2030. The freight market is keeping a close eye on how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule about the legality of some Trump administration tariffs. Producers of uncoated freesheet paper are citing reduced capacity and increased demand as the basis for price increases that are set to take effect in February and March.

With back-to-school schedules everywhere in continual flux, this BTS shopping season has gotten as unpredictable as hurricane tracking. While the National Retailer Federation reports a large increase in consumer spending as parents buy pricey new laptops and desks for home schoolrooms, national advertisers are taking a hall pass. Kantar says advertising spending for back-to-school is off 70% so far this year. The best word for consumer sentiment is still confusion. Kantar’s polling finds 13% of consumers are comfortable sending children back to school “as soon as possible,” 14% want to wait more than six months, and 25% fall somewhere in between one and five months. More than half of also say they don’t know.

A gym in South Carolina has sued Meta Platforms for allegedly overcharging Facebook advertisers a collective $4 billion, starting in 2013 and continuing for at least four years. In a class-action complaint filed late last week, Iron Tribe Fitness alleges that Facebook failed to honor representations that its auction system “would inherently protect bidders from overbidding.” The allegations center on Facebook's system for charging advertisers that submit winning bids in auctions. Iron Tribe, headquartered in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, alleges that Facebook purported to use a version of a “second price” auction system but instead, inadvertently, used a “blended price” system. The move to a “blended price” system was due to an error in a 2013 software update, according to the complaint.