• by Wayne Friedman , August 21, 2018

Comcast Corp. grabbed the highest share of advertising revenue from national marketers of any media company in the first half of 2018 -- improving its share of a year ago.

Comcast posted a 12% share in revenue from national marketers, according to Standard Media Index, from January through June 2018. Google had the second highest ad revenue share at 9.6%.

A year ago, for the first six months of 2017, Comcast was at 9.7% share; Google, 9.1%.

For national marketers, these shares comprise any advertising purchased through media agencies -- national and local media, including national TV networks, local radio, local TV, newspapers and digital media.

This year, after Comcast and Google, Walt Disney was at 8.6% share (it was at 9.1% a year ago); CBS Corp., 6.3% (6.8% in 2017); Time Warner, 5.7% (same as 2017); 21st Century Fox, 5.5% (6.5% in 2017); Discovery Inc. 3.9% (same as 2017); Viacom, 3.8% (4.0% in 2017); and Facebook, 3.5% (2.8% in 2017).

SMI also says a 3.9% share went through media agency trading desks. It was 3.5% in 2017.

This year, the top 10 media companies/platforms totaled a 62.9% share of national marketers dollars; the remaining 37.1% share went to other media sellers.

SMI says 63% of advertising revenue from national marketers went to traditional media and 37% went to digital media. Just looking at video advertising, 89% went to linear TV video platforms and 11% to digital video.

SMI’s data comes from five of the seven major media agency groups , gleaned from raw invoices, actual dollar amounts spent on each ad buy. These agencies make up 70% of the national TV market. SMI models out the remaining 30% using occurrence data.