Google is World's Largest Media Owner; Facebook is Fastest Growing

Google’s dominance as the world’s largest media owner has increased, with the gap between it and its nearest competitor widening significantly over the past year.

According to ZenithOptimedia’s new report Top Thirty Global Media Owners 2015, Google is now 136% bigger than the second-largest media owner (Disney), up from 115% a year earlier. It is also bigger than the second-largest and third-largest (Comcast) combined.

The Top Thirty Global Media Owners report is a unique ranking of the world’s largest media companies by media revenue, as estimated by ZenithOptimedia. The report was launched in 2007 and was last published by ZenithOptimedia in 2014. ZenithOptimedia defines media revenue as all revenue deriving from businesses that support advertising, to determine which companies are most important for the marketing industry.*

Google has benefited from the rising sales of smartphones and tablets, making its central search function available to consumers on the move – especially useful for shoppers looking for price comparison – and allowed consumers to view content at times and places most convenient for them. This has created new opportunities to target them with display ads, another important component of Google’s business.


But the main beneficiary of the transition to mobile has been Facebook, which is the fastest growing of our top 30 media owners. Facebook’s media revenues grew 63% over the past year. Facebook has actively embraced mobile technology in order to encourage its users to visit it regularly and frequently throughout the day, while designing its ads to blend seamlessly into the content feed. Facebook is the 10th-largest media owner in our ranking.