China Mobile and Tencent knock US firms off PaidContent's list of top 50 digital companies

This year, PaidContent evaluated companies outside the US for the first time, and also looked at new segments including business information and advertising. As a result, several US companies didn't make the list, including CareerBuilder, Hulu and the New York Times. Twenty-three out of the 50 companies ranked come from outside the US. 

"This doesn’t necessarily mean that they had a bad year—the New York Times’ digital earnings grew thanks to its new metered fees, Hulu’s content cash almost doubled from subscriptions and heightened ad sales, while Demand rode out Google’s indexing algorithm change to also earn more than last year," said PaidContent. 

The new global list also caused US digital players such as Zynga to tumble 24 spots to number 37, while Netflix sank 14 places despite adding US$500,000 to its revenue. 

China Mobile's mobile data revenues catapulted the brand to No. 2 with revenues of US$7.58 billion, while Tencent's diversified internet offerings brought it US$4.5 billion and a spot in the top 10. Other Asia-Pacific companies that made the list are Sony at No. 12 with US$3.4 billion in digital revenues, China Telecom at No. 16 with US$2.7 billion and Baidu at No. 17 with US$2.3 billion. 

WPP leads the advertising networks on the list at No. 7 with digital revenues of US$4.7 billion, followed by Dentsu at No. 14 with US$2.9 billion, Omnicom Group at No. 15 with US$2.8 billion and Publicis at No. 18 with US$2.2 billion.