by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, May 2, 2017

Digital platforms from companies like Google, Facebook, and Baidu funded by Internet advertising dominate the Zenith Top Thirty Global Media Owners report released Tuesday.

Missing from the list is Amazon — the behemoth marketplace looking to make an impact in advertising and media.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky admitted during the company’s recent earnings call that “it’s pretty early in the days with advertising.” He said the company’s goal is to enhance the customer shopping and viewing experience with targeted recommendations, and he believes the customer data collected during searches and transactions helps the company to make preferences and recommendations.

Google and Facebook combined accounted for 20% of global advertising across all media in 2016 — up from 11% in 2012, according to Zenith. The two companies captured 64% of all the growth in global ad spend between 2012 and 2016.

This year the methodology focus purely on media owners’ revenue from advertising, excluding revenue from all other activities.

Google, under its holding company Alphabet, generated $79.4 billion in ad revenue in 2016 — three times more than the second-largest company, Facebook, which took in $26.9 billion. Comcast, which ranked No. 3, is the highest traditional media owner, with $12.9 billion in ad revenue.

Five other pure-Internet media companies took a space in the top 30. Baidu came in at No. 4, followed by Microsoft at No. 9, Yahoo at No. 13, Verizon at No. 21, and Twitter at No. 30.

Collectively, the seven digital platforms generated $132.8 billion in Internet ad revenue in 2016, according to the report.

Verizon became a media owner in 2015 with the acquisition of AOL, per the report — which notes that adding Yahoo to the mix would boost it to No. 6, up from No. 21.

Twenty of the 30 media owners in the ranking are based in the U.S. Companies in the United States have invested the most in extending their reach overseas, per the report. China and Germany each have three media owners in the ranking: Baidu, Tencent and CCTV for China, and Bertelsmann, ProSiebenSat.1 and Axel Springer for Germany. Four countries have one media owner each on the list: France has JCDecaux; Brazil, Grupo Globo; Italy, Mediaset; and the UK, ITV.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

(33)