Facebook and Baidu fastest-growing media owners

Google’s dominance as the world’s largest media owner has increased, with the gap between its nearest competitor widening significantly over the past year, according to ZenithOptimedia’s Top Thirty Global Media Owners 2015 report.

The Internet giant is now 136% bigger than the second-largest media owner, Disney – and also bigger than Disney and Comcast (the third-largest) combined.

The report – a unique ranking of the world’s largest media companies by media revenue – attributes the rising sales of smartphones and tablets to Google’s success as consumers increasingly use its central search function while on the move.

However, the main beneficiary of the transition to mobile has been Facebook, which is the fastest growing of ZenithOptimedia’s top 30 media owners, with media revenues up 63% year on year.

The social network is the 10th-largest media owner in the overall ranking.

The next-fastest growing company is Baidu – China’s equivalent of Google – which grew by 43% over the year.

The company’s growth has been driven by the rapid development of China’s ad market, as well as improvements in search technology, and it is now the world’s 14th-largest media owner – ahead of digital rivals Yahoo (18th) and Microsoft (21st).

Between the report’s five purely digital media owners – Google, Facebook, Baidu, Yahoo and Microsoft – $71 billion worth of media revenue was generated over the last financial year, representing 68% of all global digital adspend.

Other media owners in the ranking include 21st Century Fox (4th), Viacom (7th), News Corp (9th), JC Decaux (23rd) and ITV plc (27th).

“The rapid growth of digital media and emerging ad markets has strengthened the position of media owners such as Google, Facebook, Baidu and Globo, at the expense of traditional media owners in developed markets,” said ZenithOptimedia’s head of forecasting, Jonathan Barnard.

“The top digital media owners currently maintain a strong grip on the digital ad market, but they face the constant threat of displacement by disruptive innovators. While some emerging-market media owners face challenges in expanding their businesses in the short term, we expect to see more media owners from emerging markets enter the top 30 over the next few years.”