Technology giants Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook take the top five places respectively in this year’s BrandZ Top 100 list of most-valuable global brands.

Released by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown, the ranking shows Google, Apple and Microsoft retaining the top three positions, respectively growing their brand value by 7 per cent to US$245.6 billion, 3 per cent to $234.7 billion and 18 per cent to $143.2 billion over the past year.

Amazon achieved the highest dollar-value growth of all brands in the top 100 ranking, rising 41 per cent to $139.3 billion to take fourth position. It was followed by Facebook, which grew 27 per cent to $129.8 billion.

A quarter of the total value of the 100 most-valuable global brands is made up of the combined brand value of tech’s “Fearsome Five”.

The top 10 most valuable global brands for this year…

1. Google
2. Apple
3. Microsoft
4. Amazon
5. Facebook
6. AT&T
7. Visa
8. Tencent
9. IBM
10. McDonald’s

“This is the era of internet giants that have developed ever-growing ecosystems that touch and connect consumers, with the overall aim of making life easier, simpler and better,” says BrandZ global head for Kantar Millward Brown, Doreen Wang. “Technology with the consumer at its centre has redefined our expectations, and we now take for granted that products, services, tools and content are immediately available at our fingertips.”

China concentration

This year, 24 brands from the Asia-Pacific region made it into the top 100, mostly concentrated around China. The top 13 Chinese brands are: Tencent (8), Alibaba (14), China Mobile (17), ICBC (28), Baidu (39), Huawei (49), China Construction Bank (54), Ping An (61), Moutai (64), Agricultural Bank of China (72), China Life (78), Sinopec (85) and Bank of China (94).

The rest of APAC contributed 11 more: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ and Telstra (Australia), Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Softbank and NTT (Japan), Samsung (Korea), AIA (HK) and HDFC (India).

With increased use of its social platform WeChat, Tencent entered the top 10 for the first time, with a brand value increase of 27 per cent to $108.3 billion.

Retail was the fastest-rising category, increasing 14 per cent in value over the past 12 months, driven by e-commerce brands such as Alibaba and Amazon which, like many native internet companies, continued to add physical stores to their sales channels.

Overall, the value growth of pure online retailers has soared 388 per cent since 2006, while traditional retailers dropped 23 per cent as they took longer to adapt their offering to include online.

In its 12th year, the list combines measures of brand equity based on interviews with more than 3 million consumers about thousands of brands.