Figures from the Digital Publishers Revenue Index show a 2.3% growth in revenue year on year.

The figures are based on a report of UK publishers by AOP and Deloitte.

The growth seen for B2B publishers, according to the figures, was grown by sponsorship and subscriptions.

Sponsorship has grown 47% when compared to the same quarter in 2015, while subscriptions have grown 28% in the same period.

The largest revenue category across all platforms for B2B and B2C publishers remains display, which accounts for 37% of total revenue.

Sponsorship accounts for 21% of total revenue, while subscriptions counts for 15%.

Managing director at AOP, Richard Reeves, said: “It’s interesting to see sponsorship doing so well at a time when increased focus and revenue is being allocated to programmatic trading.” Reeves continued: “While programmatic offers a valuable strategy, the increase in sponsorship revenue demonstrates that context and content-related marketing continues to be imperative to both publishers and their advertisers. The careful balancing of both programmatic and native advertising spend is a trend we expect to see continuing throughout 2017.”