The Guardian is expected to report a 25% rise in digital revenues from £55m to almost £70m in the year to the end of March 2014, as Mark Sweney reported yesterday.

To gauge the significance of that increase, it is helpful to see it in the context of the release of figures by Deloitte and the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) for the year up to 2013.

These show that digital advertising revenues for UK publishers were up by 18% in the 12 months up to December 2013 compared to the same period in 2012.

This represents "the highest year-on-year growth since the revenues were first tracked in 2008."

In other words, even if we allow for the fact that The Guardian figure relates to only nine months of 2013, the paper is running ahead of the overall trend.

According to the AOP digital publishers' revenue index (DPRI), the 2013 performance was "a particularly strong year" with 73% of respondents reporting positive digital advertising growth.
One stand-out statistic was the revenue generated from mobile and tablet subscriptions, which rose by more than 80% in 2013 compared to 2012.

And revenue from advertising on smartphones also grew by more than 60% between September and December 2013.