The Global Media Giants
The duopoly of Google and Facebook over advertising dollars looks all set, despite the brand safety and inflated metrics concerns that brands have raised regarding them in the last few months. In March 2017, many advertisers pulled out their ads from Google’s YouTube as they found their content appearing next to videos that promoted hate speech or extremist content. Facebook, on the other hand, accepted in September 2016 that it gave advertisers inflated video metrics for two years.
And yet, according to Zenith’s report, the two captured 64 per cent of all the growth in global ad spend between 2012 and 2016. Google emerged the largest media owner with $79.4 billion in ad revenue in 2016, followed by Facebook with $26.9 billion in revenue. At third place was Comcast at $12.9 billion, making it the largest traditional media owner — after Internet advertising overtook television to become the largest advertising medium this year.
Commenting on the findings, Zenith president Vittorio Bonori says, “The scale of the biggest platforms highlights the importance of building strong partnerships between agencies and media owners. Brands need to deal with these platforms to communicate with consumers effectively and efficiently, and agencies need to ensure they do so on the best terms available.”
Digital platforms funded by Internet advertising dominated the top 30 rankings. Besides Google and Facebook, the other pure-Internet media owners in the top 30 included Baidu, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon and Twitter. Together, the seven digital platforms accounted for $132.8 billion — which is 73 per cent of all Internet ad spend, and 24 per cent of global ad spend across all media.
Twitter emerged the fastest growing media owner on the list, showing a growth of 734 per cent between 2012 and 2016. China’s Tencent followed Twitter; its ad revenues increased by 697 per cent during the same period.
Jonathan Barnard, head of Forecasting at Zenith, says, “Zenith’s new ranking demonstrates just how much the Internet advertising platforms are setting the pace for global ad spend growth. Google and Facebook alone have accounted for almost two thirds of global ad spend growth since 2012.”
Country-wise, the US had the most number of media owners, accounting for 20 out of 30. The report highlights that this was due to several reasons such as the US having the biggest ad market, US companies investing the most in extending their reach, and innovation in Silicon Valley powering the growth of Internet advertising.
China and Germany each have three media owners on the list, with Baidu, Tencent and CCTV for China, and Bertelsmann, ProSiebenSat.1 and Axel Springer for Germany. There are four other countries with one media owner each including France’s JCDecaux, Brazil’s Grupo Globo, Italy’s Mediaset and the UK’s ITV.
