Advertising related to marriage equality and a state election pushed news media revenue in Australia to a year high and a total of $2.02 billion in 2017.

The figures from the last quarter's News Media Index hit $519.8 million, helping hold news media's position as the third-largest media sector.

The result was underpinned by growth of 8.5 per cent in digital revenue (to $134 million), well above the agency-only growth rate of 6.6 per cent reported by the Standard Media Index. The digital spend of direct advertisers jumped by 31.8 per cent to $85 million in the quarter.

Programmatic ad revenue also continued to grow strongly, rising by 26.5 per cent to $9.9 million, while digital classifieds rose by 21.6 per cent to $61 million in the quarter.

NewsMediaWorks chief executive Peter Miller says the NMI figures again highlight the differing trends in spending between direct and agency markets. The total direct advertising spend dipped four per cent, a fraction of the decline reported in the agency only print revenue figure for the same period.

Unlike the monthly SMI data which reports agency only revenue, the quarterly News Media Index reports all print and digital ad revenue to Australia's largest news media publishers from both agencies and direct advertisers and is independently verified by SMI.

The total sector was back 9.9 per cent in the quarter.

"Trust has been a key issue for advertisers in 2017 and will continue to be this year, which is why we have seen brands choosing news media, particularly for their digital campaigns, because the trusted environment that our publishers offer is unmatched for both content and ads2," says Miller.

"Direct advertisers continue to have greater confidence in the effectiveness of news media than the media agency market. The fact is that news media continues to attract highly engaged audiences who trust not only the news media content but also the ads."

SMI AU/NZ managing director Jane Ractliffe said the data also shows how news media is remaining highly relevant for direct advertisers, with that market growing its share of total news media ad spend by 3.8 percentage points to 56.3 per cent in CY2017.

"This quarter we have seen especially strong growth from the direct advertiser market into national print titles, with the total spend from those advertisers growing 13.5% from the same quarter a year ago. And the fact that in the past year Direct ad spend has only dropped back four per cent across all news media publishing platforms shows how engaged these advertisers are with brand-friendly news media.''

Revenue data is taken from NewsMediaWorks' members News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media, West Australian Newspapers and Community Newspaper Group, WA, who represent around 90 per cent of the news media sector.

• Last week, NewsmediaWorks announced that news media on digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs, was read by 72 per cent, or 13.5 million, Australians according to emma data for November 2017. Some 16.9 million people read news media across all platforms, while newspapers alone were read by 12.9 million people.