64% of Digital Ad Spend Controlled by 5 Companies

Posted by Darren on Oct 29, 2011 • (Comments)

I was doing some calculations for my own purposes and wanted to find out what percentage of the digital media ad spend (search, display, mobile, etc) is controlled by Google, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, and Microsoft.  Well, after searching through their 10K’s, it’s about $40.1B, or roughly 64% of the worlds digital media ad spend.

According to a ZenithOptimedia press release on October 3, 2011, worldwide digital advertising accounted for about $64.03B.

Google generates approximately 364% more revenue from advertising than it’s next closest rival, Yahoo!.

With Facebook at $1.86B in advertising revenue (excluding virtual currencies/goods) for 2010, it puts them at right behind Microsoft but ahead of AOL.  With Facebook only now starting to monetize their platform, you can start to see how big an impact they could have on the dominance of the digital advertising landscape.

And of course, you can really see how dominant Google is.

Digital Media Ad Spend

Tagged as , , , , , , + Categorized as Advertising & Marketing
  • TimTerrella
    Yes this maybe seen as obvious but I think would be more comepling would be a % of Digital Ad Buys Controlled by (#)X and who they are. In other words who are the major advertisers supporting Google Facebook Yahoo MSFT Revenues etc .
  • Interesting.. It was good to know about these facts. Google undoubtly takes the number 1 position. Thanks for sharing the views.
  • thanks for this, is definately interesting: However, what I would like to see http://piattiprojects.wordpres...  is an overlay of the growth path trend in advertising spend over the last 5 years for all 5 of these companies, so that one might compare the rate of acceleration or deceleration of revenue allocation to their platforms?

    I have referred to you here: http://piattiprojects.wordpres...
  • It would be fascinating to see #adspend over a timeline of the last 5 years to help us guess the next 2 years. Will the aggregation continue?
  • Great question. I think each of the companies listed above are not done acquiring and they will buy businesses who have the opportunity to derive additional revenue, even if it means going thru different media vehicles then is currently serviced.
  • thats certainly very eye opening data darren. I would be very interested to see a subsegment of each co regarding what ad categories and who dominates by category..
  • Chris R
    I can't decide whether to 'like' this b/c it's a great state-of-the-state...or to 'dislike' b/c of the obvious.
  • I totally agree with you. "like" is the wrong descriptor
  • Brian P
    A bigger economic side note from this concentration is..... aside from Google and maybe Facebook the others on this list are not hiring but actually laying off employees.....so for every dollar the big agencies continue to overspend in the top 5 there are less jobs created and less working people with disposable dollars to buy the goods and services they are trying to sell......
  • Really good point.
  • Some great data here. On the bright side, that still leaves $24 billion for the rest of us... and 40.1 Billion reasons to find a solution to that addresses brands and publishers needs better than Google does.
  • And it comes to them from 4 firms!  4 Firms spend 75% of the dollars in 5 places!
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/s...
  • wow google is taking over the world
  • matthew goldstein
    Very interesting, Who is #6, NYT/about.com with $387 million in 2010 digital revenue?  If so, they are a very distant #6.
  • Don't forget about international players based outside US. Baidou is close to AOL, and even Russian Yandex is above about.com
  • Yes, very distant!  Thanks for dropping by, Matthew
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