When Gawker Media founder Nick Denton talks about plummeting display-ad revenues—as he has often recently—lots of people listen for clues about the market. So when Denton reports that his network of blogs is doing better than expected in both revenues and traffic during a month has traditionally been miserable for the indie blog network, it’s also bound cause some people to perk up. Jim Romenesko got ahold of Denton’s latest memo to the troops, which notes that the company’s ad revenues for 2009 are up by about a fifth over last year so far. Traffic to the entire group of blogs amount to nearly 300 million page views in February, up by 34 percent year-over-year.

SEE ALSO: Where’s The Ad Market Headed Next Year? Nick Denton’s Dire Prediction

Denton attributes the performance in part to new, larger ad units and the fact that the sales team has far fewer sites to concentrate on. The company successfully spun off four properties last year: Gridskipper, Idolator, Wonkette and Consumerist; it also consolidated operations and laid off staff at Valleywag, Defamer and Fleshbot. While Denton was cautiously optimistic, he said that the company couldn’t afford to “be complacent,” and that he’d continue to cut costs as necessary.

More after the jump...