Digital media is exploding. Half of us now read news on tablets, virtually all music tracks are bought electronically, and nearly a tenth of Americans are ditching cable for internet TV.
But what does it take to make money from these fast-growing industries, and which companies are leading the way? Welcome to our second annual paidContent 50 list — our attempt to answer those questions.
The paidContent 50 ranks digital-media companies based not on whether we like their products or are on a first-name basis with their CEOs. We use a very simple and objective metric: the revenue they earn from digital content, or from the adverting around that content. After all, companies ultimately need to earn revenue to survive and thrive — the more of it, the better.
Last year’s paidContent 50 focused on U.S. companies. This year, we’ve gone global, in an effort to better reflect changes in the industry itself. A growing number of content companies — Netflix, Sina and Spotify, among them — are aggressively pushing into overseas markets ater dominating at home. As that becomes a bigger focus for these companies, you can’t gauge their success without factoring in their track record internationally.
Creating this list wasn’t easy. We wanted digital revenue from the last full year, either calendar or fiscal, depending on the company. To get those numbers, we combed through public filings, read an ungodly number of news stories, and worked our network of contacts and analysts for data and background. Some media companies break out digital sales for everyone to see, but other companies (and not just startups) make it extremely difficult to discern. With some of those companies, our digital sales numbers are educated estimates based on our research, and in those cases, we list our sources and explain our math. (Read more about our methodology here.)
That Google tops our paidContent 50 list again this year may not come as a shocker. But there are definitely some surprises in this year’s crop of most-successful companies. How much do you know about South African publisher Naspers? Well, it dwarfs many U.S. household media brands when it comes to digital revenue. Twitter is hugely important media company, but it didn’t crack our list (and neither did The New York Times, for that matter). Amazon, on the other hand, is going gangbusters with content sales, as our writeup shows. And as with so many industries, China is becoming a power in media, too.
We’ve tried to be as scientific as possible with this list — the numbers are rooted in raw numbers, not emotions. But no such list is ever perfect. This is a work-in-progress; it’s aimed at starting the conversation about digital success. Please give us your feedback so we can make next year’s list even better.
Additional reporting by Jeff Roberts,
Staci D. Kramer, Laura Owen and Dan Frankel.
More paidContent 50 coverage
| Position | Company Name | Sector | Digital Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Search | $36.4B | |
| 2 | China Mobile | Telco | $7.58B |
| 3 | Bloomberg | Business information | $7B |
| 4 | Reed Elsevier | Business information | $5.93B |
| 5 | Apple | Diversified | $5.4B |
| 6 | Yahoo | Diversified | $4.99B |
| 7 | WPP | Advertising | $4.71B |
| 8 | Thomson Reuters | Business information | $4.71B |
| 9 | Tencent | Diversified | $4.46B |
| 10 | Microsoft | Diversified | $3.93B |
| 11 | Social networks | $3.68B | |
| 12 | Sony | Diversified | $3.38B |
| 13 | Pearson | Business information | $3.14B |
| 14 | Dentsu | Advertising | $2.9B |
| 15 | Omnicom Group | Advertising | $2.78B |
| 16 | China Telecom | Telco | $2.65B |
| 17 | Baidu | Search | $2.3B |
| 18 | Publicis Groupe | Advertising | $2.19B |
| 19 | Netflix | Video | $2.01B |
| 20 | News Corp | Diversified | $1.9B |
| 21 | Amazon | Books | $1.85B |
| 22 | Naspers | Diversified | $1.82B |
| 23 | Dun&Bradstreet | Business information | $1.76B |
| 24 | Groupon | Advertising | $1.61B |
| 25 | Activision Blizzard | Games | $1.56B |
| 26 | Comcast | Broadcast | $1.5B |
| 27 | Time Warner | Diversified | $1.5B |
| 28 | Hearst | Diversified | $1.5B |
| 29 | Wolters Kluwer | Business information | $1.47B |
| 30 | AOL | Web content | $1.4B |
| 31 | Universal Music Group | Music | $1.39B |
| 32 | IAC | Web content | $1.34B |
| 33 | Axel Springer | Diversified | $1.22B |
| 34 | Cox Enterprises | Diversified | $1.2B |
| 35 | CBS | Broadcast | $1.2B |
| 36 | Netease | Diversified | $1.19B |
| 37 | Zynga | Games | $1.14B |
| 38 | Gannett | News publishing | $1.1B |
| 39 | Electronic Arts | Games | $1.07B |
| 40 | Monster Worldwide | Advertising | $1.04B |
| 41 | Walt Disney | Diversified | $1B |
| 42 | Viacom | Broadcast | $1B |
| 43 | DMGT | News publishing | $997.24M |
| 44 | YP Holdings | Advertising | $990M |
| 45 | EMI | Music | $903.16M |
| 46 | Shanda Games | Games | $838.3M |
| 47 | Informa | Business information | $805.37M |
| 48 | Warner Music | Music | $768M |
| 49 | Yell Group | Classifieds | $722.84M |
| 50 | Hakuhodo DY | Advertising | $719.22M |
“Creating this list wasn’t easy.”
I can imagine. Manipulating the numbers to get Microsoft into the top 10 must have been really tough.
lol. but seriously, they didn’t manipulate anything. this info is from public data on revenues and their entire methodology is described here: http://paidcontent.org/2012/07/31/pc50/52/
Yes, but they still should have had time to comment on the fact that MSN is no longer part of Microsoft and hasn’t been for several weeks. Sure that means they get to claim the revenue for this year but at least point out that they won’t have it next year.
AlanL:
The Microsoft profile page says: “Microsoft recently sold its stake in MSNBC.com.”
And the research period for all companies here predates that sale.
Any revenue change as a result will be reflected in next year’s pC50.
Thanks.
Does this list distinguish between companies that charge users for access and those that do not, or was that weighted in the rankings?
Why is eBay not in this list? They have an ad business on eBay.com and their classified sites, and the seller fees they collect are essentially paid ads since the platform doesn’t handle the items. This list is also missing Alibaba Group from China (including Taobao), and Gree from Japan.
Groupon and Monster are’t really media companies. I’m not even sure that ad agencies should qualify in the same category as Viacom or Time Warner. Totally different business model.
What about Valve and their digital games platform: Steam. I know they are a private company and figures are hard to come by but in 2011 Forbes reckoned they have more than 50% of the 4 billion dollar PC games download market. That is huge.
I would really love to see Paid Content do some investigation on Valve because they are an incredibly innovative company who really push digital retailing to its limits.
+1 on looking into Valve
Google+ is a big strategy shift for Google and could, if executed well, become another digital revenue stream ti augment the search cash cow.
I think this is a terrific list despite any reservations some people have about the methodology. It really demonstrates the huge growth potential of digital media companies in some of the emerging markets. Also, as a scientist – I note Elsevier being top 5 in revenue (Elsevier is publisher behind many of the top scientific journals).
Thanks for the pointer on Valve.
Groupon/Monster/eBay – yes, all interestingly debatable.
What makes me wonder ist, taht there under th etzop 50 is not a single company from Germany. Germany is the biggest market in EUropa, but no German Hundefutter among the big player. I don’t buy that.
kenhasselblad – Axel Springer is at #33.
You might want to add Hubert Burda Media (Germany). Digital Revenue 2011: 937.2 Euro (see http://www.hubert-burda-media.de/chameleon/outbox/public/86cee9e5-720f-fba9-3dc2-33982b8b5069/Media_in_Transition_2012.pdf , page 131)
Best, Sebastian (Hubert Burda Media)