The digital content industry has exploded on a global scale. With many of the dominant players in domestic markets expanding overseas, a competitive international market is emerging. This year’s list includes companies from around the world and takes into account their aggregate digital revenue, wherever it was earned. Beyond highlighting the companies that are having the most success with digital media, the list also sheds light on monetization strategies that are proving to be the most reliable.
“It’s no secret that digital content has blossomed in a fairly short period of time,” said Robert Andrews, GigaOM senior editor, international. “But making money in this fast-growing industry is still a work in progress. The paidContent 50 are showing us how it’s done.”
The 2012 paidContent 50 represent large, small, public and private companies, including:
Position Company Name Sector Digital Revenue
1 Google Search etc $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 Search etc $4.99B
7 WPP Advertising $4.71B
8 Thomson Reuters Business information $4.71B
9 Tencent Diversified $4.46B
10 Microsoft Diversified $3.93B
(The complete list is available here.)
Methodology
The paidContent team combed thousands of pages of company filings and research reports, reviewed the numbers with digital media executives and analysts, and mined its collective knowledge of the companies they write about on a daily basis.
About the paidContent 50
The paidContent 50 is a global ranking of companies from music and news to advertising and games. Instead of relying on subjective criteria, the paidContent 50 is rooted in numbers and ranks companies by the amount of revenue they earned from digital content in the past year.
About GigaOM
Founded in 2006, GigaOM has grown into the leading independent voice on emerging technologies and the disruption of media. The GigaOM news network’s online audience of 5.5 million monthly unique readers relies on its definitive coverage of cloud, mobile, cleantech, consumer web and media. GigaOM Events bring together the people innovating, shaping and defining the ongoing evolution of the technology industry. GigaOM Pro offers the highest quality research and analysis of emerging technology markets and the companies making a difference in those sectors.