08/05/17 - Google and Facebook bring in one-fifth of global ad revenue (70)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/02/google-and-facebook-bring-in-one-fifth-of-global-ad-revenue

This article is about how Google and Facebook attracted one-fifth of global advertising spending last year, nearly double the figure of five years ago, research shows. Online advertising has overtaken television to become the world’s largest ad medium, according to data and analysis agency Zenith. Internet-only media companies are grabbing the biggest slices of the online advertising market, while traditional news publishers have fallen far behind and been forced to make cutbacks. Furthermore, digital platforms funded by internet ads dominate the top 30. Aside from Alphabet and Facebook, there are five pure internet media owners in the ranking: Baidu, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon and Twitter. Between them, the seven digital platforms generated $132.8bn of internet ad revenues in 2016, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all internet ad spend, and nearly one-quarter of total ad spending. Many of the companies involved in the boycott discovered their advertising spend was being used to place banner ads over YouTube videos from groups such as Britain First, indirectly funding extremists.

• Google, owned by parent company Alphabet, is by far the biggest media owner in the world and attracted $79.4bn (£61.5bn) in ad revenues in 2016, three times more than the second-largest, Facebook, which pulled in $26.9bn, according to Zenith. The previous year, Alphabet took $67.4bn of ad revenues and Facebook $17.1bn.
• Together, the two companies accounted for nearly 20% of global advertising spending last year, up from 16.3% in 2015 and 10.6% in 2012.
• Between them, the seven digital platforms generated $132.8bn of internet ad revenues in 2016, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all internet ad spend, and nearly one-quarter of total ad spending.

In my opinion, I believe that online advertising is one of the very most important reasons why companies such as Facebook and Google are doing so well. Considering they are feeding off other companies allows them to see an increase within their revenue. This is another reason why new and digital media is exceeding more than the traditional print advertising because more users have joined the online platform and therefore, have been people to advertise to. This then allows to more users clicking on the different sites and therefore, this is how these big institutions are doing so well nowadays.