A 17.5 per cent YOY rise in digital sales for Australia's four largest news publishers is still not enough to offset falling print advertising revenues.

The second News Media Index figures show a $576 million take for the second quarter of 2016 - which included a 14.4 per cent increase in digital advertising revenue - fell 7.1 per cent on the same period of 2015, thanks to reduced revenue from print advertising (-9.4 per cent) and newspaper inserted magazines (-7.1 per cent). Published figures do not show whether this represents a slowing in digital advertising growth.

Launched in May, the News Media Index uses figures from News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media, West Australian Newspapers and APN News & Media, prepared by Standard Media Index.

Latest published figures show financial year and calendar year to date comparisons between 2016 and 2015, and are a bid to "address misconceptions by agency buyers, advertisers, investors and commentators about the true size of the sector". NewsMediaWorks says the second quarter's total advertising revenue contracted by 5.4 per cent, not the 13 per cent fall reported in SMI agency-only data for newspapers. NewsMediaWorks chief executive Mark Hollands says the disparity is significant: "Advertisers with close publisher relationships, and who understand the engagement of their audiences, see the value in news media brands and remain with them because they represent a successful marketing investment," he says.

Latest revenue results "illustrate the true size of the sector and the robustness of the news media business in challenging economic times. Growth of 14.4 per cent in digital revenue for Q2 demonstrates the ongoing success of the industry in its transformation to create a profitable balance of print and digital news media offerings.

"Importantly, direct revenues have held up well with a small decline of 1.2 per cent in Q2 compared with the corresponding period in 2015."

He says the buying decisions of media agencies "continue to be out of synch with those of direct advertisers", as shown by the disparity between whole industry NMI and agency-only SMI figures.

NewsMediaWorks says revenue from its four foundation members represents about 90 per cent of the news media sector, with SMI extracting information directly from publisher financial systems.