• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 13, 2012

Facebook has emerged as the “strongest” digital media brand among advertisers and agency executives, replacing stalwart Google, according to the 2012 edition of an annual survey of ad industry perceptions about the media brands they use to advertise with. The results, which are based on annual polls of thousands of advertisers and agency executives conducted by Advertiser Perceptions Inc., are to Madison Avenue what J.D. Power’s annual awards are to the automotive industry.

The score goes beyond simple metrics like customer satisfaction to probe other key attributes that ad executives use to value media, including ad results, audience and the image of a media company's brand.

The perceived brand strength of Facebook reflects the social network’s overwhelming momentum this past year, and catapults it over last year’s strongest digital brand, Google. Advertiser Perceptions did not release a ranking, and only provided the top media brands in each category, so it was difficult to assess the relative impact on Google’s brand on Madison Avenue, but Google also failed to place in the top slot of several other important advertiser brand attributes, including “sales knowledge,” “customer service,” and “advertiser satisfaction.” First place in those categories went to Time.com, Yelp, and FoxNews.com, respectively.

Last year, the No. 1 digital brands in those categories were WSJ.com, Yahoo, and ESPN.com, respectively.

While Google’s flagship product and brand now lag in Madison Avenue perception, it continues to have the most strength among advertising networks, a separate category broken out by AR. The Google Display Network ranked No. 1 in overall brand strength among online ad networks for the second year in a row, which are the only two years AR has been releasing the identities of the top media brands.

A vertical Google brand, YouTube did make strides against Facebook in the mobile media category, emerging as the No. 1 mobile media brand in terms of brand strength, replacing Facebook’s top ranking a year ago.

Among the other key attributes for ad networks, Collective ranked No. 1 in “sales knowledge,” Specific Media in “customer service” and YuMe in “advertiser satisfaction.

Among other key attributes for mobile media brands, NFL was No. 1 for the second year in a row in “sales knowledge,” while CNN was tops in “customer service,” and The Weather Channel delivered the most “customer satisfaction.”

The highest-rated overall media brand among all digital and traditional media brands in this year’s report was ABC, which toppled last year’s top overall media brand, Meredith, for the hearts and minds of advertisers and agency executives.