Google and Facebook are the world heavyweights in media advertising, together raking in 20% of global ad spending, according to the latest Top Thirty Global Media Owners report from Zenith. That’s almost double their share from 2012 (11%), as they’ve hogged almost two-thirds (64%) of global ad spending growth in that period.
This year’s report relies on a different methodology than years past, in that it focuses only on media owners’ revenues from advertising, this time excluding revenues from other activities.
But the end result – at least for the top dog – is the same. Google’s $79.4 billion in ad revenue last year was 3 times larger than its closest competitor, Facebook ($26.9 billion). In essence, then, Google itself captures about 15% of worldwide advertising spending, an incredible presence in the advertising market.
The largest traditional media owner by ad revenues, meanwhile, is Comcast, coming in third with $12.9 billion in ad revenues. That’s less than half of what Facebook took in last year.
Over the past 5 years, there have been some standouts in growth:
- Twitter, with ad revenues soaring by 734% between 2012 and 2016, propelling it to the 30th spot;
- Tencent, up 697% and climbing to #14;
- Facebook, up 528% (see above);
- Baidu, up 190% and in the 4th spot; and
- Sinclair Broadcast Group, up 171%, and taking the 27th position in the rankings.
In other highlights from the report:
- Pure-internet media owners occupy 7 meaningful positions on the list, and together captured almost three-quarters (73%) of global ad spend in 2016 (in the US, 73% of revenues in Q4 2016 went to the the top 10 ad sellers); and
- 20 of the 30 top media owners are US companies, with China and Germany each having 3 in the rankings.
