People's dependence on web search is certainly increasing. As the most popular search engine on the web, Google has increased its dominance in global advertising revenues by more than twice if compared to its nearest competitor.
According to a research by ZenithOptimedia that rounds up ranks of companies by media revenues, which it defines as those from businesses which support advertising, Google had media revenues of $50.6 billion in 2013 to 2014, dwarfing the next largest player, the Walt Disney Company, at $20.3 billion.
Television broadcasting, magazines, newspaper publishing, web search and social media are also included in the research.
Google may have grown its media revenue by 16 percent over the year, thanks to more people accessing the web from mobile devices, but Facebook is closing at a fast rate. The social media network is ranked at #10 on the list, rising by 63 percent in the year with $7 billion in revenue. Facebook moves up from previous report from #14, making it the fastest growing business out of the 30 businesses ranked in the research.
According to ZenithOptimedia, Facebook accounted for over a quarter of all advertising spending on mobile devices. This is all because Facebook is also benefiting from the mobile trend that is booming rapidly.
"Google has benefited from the rising sales of smartphones and tablets, making its central search function available to consumers on the move, allowing them to view content at times and places most convenient for them," said the report.
"But the main beneficiary of the transition to mobile has been Facebook. It 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."
With media revenues putting a massive $17.8 billion in 2014, Google's dominance is larger than Disney's that is ranked second, and Comcast that came third, combined. The fourth was 21st Century Fox at $17.6 billion, followed by CBS at $11 billion.
Asian companies are also performing well, mainly from Baidu which is a Chinese equivalent of Google. The company's income rose by 43 percent over the year to $5.1 billion, putting itself to #14 on the list.
Glancing At Google's Dominance
There were times when Google's advertisements went down. The one that happened on 2014 has put Google on the news. It turned out that Google's online advertising platform, DoubleClick, was to blame. The DoubleClick ad servers crashed, causing the global ads offline, affecting the entire infrastructure by which advertisers bought billions of dollars of ads across millions of websites.
The crash was a small glimpse of how Google's immense influence has marked its territory all over the web. It was a reminder of how an big players like Google can achieve such dominance in the advertisement industry where billions of dollars are supporting free contents on the web.
Founded in 1998, Google's popularity is pretty much helped with the growth of the internet that has increased exponentially, and as a side product, advertising also has increased. These ads are what enable internet publishers to monetize their contents, creating revenue. Google made this possible by helping brands and businesses track and measure the effectiveness of their ads online.
Google's dominance on the web has influenced many advertisers to put more and more dollars, bringing more income for the tech giant. Its influence is so massive that has made countless of competitors struggling to keep up, while helping out many of those that use its service.
Google's presence on mobile is undeniable. Android is already becoming one of the biggest player in the mobile industry, coming on par with iOS from Apple. By controlling the flow of information, able to monetize them by giving the most relevant to those who needs them, and by being accessible to both desktop and mobile, Google is certainly worth to sit on the throne.
The social giant Facebook, despite still far to catch up, is promising a good result. As one of the fastest growing company on ZenithOptimedia's list, Facebook has a lot of potential yet to be perfected. With billions of users and counting, the social giant has one of the most complete database about people and their relationship. Time will answer whether Facebook can properly put all that information to a good use, benefiting its own, without having to stumble into problems about its users' privacy.