A couple of days of really quite spectacular data about last year’s growth from the AOP and the IAB.

Yesterday, the AOP (which I happen to Chair) released the results of its annual survey - saying that publishers’ digital revenues were up by 52% and were forecasting growth of some 31% next year. [Read Jemima’s coverage from MediaGuardian here].

Interestingly - ad revenue was up 33% while content revenue went up by 68%. We think the dramatic increase in content comes from a mix of strong B2B players and some of the broadcasters content revenues coming in.

The overall story though was of a fundamental belief in the ad model (80%+ believing the current ad model is sustainable).

Today, the IAB reported on 38% growth across the market to a total of £2.8bn, now more than 15% of the total UK ad market.

You can find a detailed breakdown of the trends behind it on their site - but basically display was up 31%, with banners, skyscrapers and embedded rich media up 45%. And sales houses are now responsible for 40% of the total display market.

Search was up 39%; and classified up a quite staggering 54%.

My thoughts?

1. It’s good to see that publishers (a not particularly precise catch all for content creators) are - give or take - keeping up with the market. In other words, those polled by the AOP were showing none of the slow down in growth that some reports from US newspapers are demonstrating.

2. OK - anyone with a memory better than a goldfish will realise this is now the fifth or sixth year that we’ve seen growth on this scale. Both growth figures are down from last year (the IAB was 41%, the AOP 63%), but even so - this is a striking run of growth for any medium.

3. The other thing is that all of this is only monitoring paid-for media. If you looked at the amount that advertisers are spending online - not to mention the amount of their effort and imagination it is taking up - the story would be even more impressive.

4. The big question of course is what happens next year (or rather for the rest of this year). The drop in housing prices and talk of global financial chaos obviously doesn’t bode entirely well. But that is the topic for another post. Let’s wallow in the good news for a bit.