Indeed, that sounds healthy. GNM’s outgoing digital content director Emily Bell had hinted to paidContent:UK in April: “I think we’ll probably see the best financial and audience figures ever in the next 12 months.”

Still, we’re not quite certain how much money GNM is making from the web because, unlike many publishers, GNM doesn’t break it out in published reports…

In September 2009, the FT reported GNM’s annual digital advertising revenue to be £30 million, around the same period as the downturn. Parent group GMG’s combined advertising and new media revenue was £156 million in 2009.

But revenue doesn’t account for costs, of course - at the same time, editor Alan Rusbridger wrote that Guardian.co.uk spending since 2002/03 had exceeded income by £20 million.

Brooks’ statement is at least an indicative metric of the current health of online advertising, as it emerges from a period of suppression through the downturn. Like Guardian.co.uk, Mail Online is emerging from that period not by deciding to charge for its website but with confidence that it can start to bring in bigger money by selling its large audience to advertisers.

Mail Online MD James Bromley told paidContent:UK his site’s half-year revenue was up by “considerably more” than 50 percent.

B2B publisher Centaur’s business MD Tim Potter told a panel at the AOP’s summit: “We are going to see a real acceleration in digital revenue.”

Brooks repeated GNM’s belief in an “open” publishing model: “The benefits of the open model to us are in the ad networks we’re creating and in verticals in which we have strength - by being open, you can bring people in. We have 3,000 developers signed up through our Open Platform.”

Disclosure: Our publisher ContentNext is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.