The most valuable brands in the world are...

Technology giants, including a retailer, dominated an annual ranking of the world's most valuable brands.



Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook took the top five places in the 2017 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking, released by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown. More than half of the Top 100’s total brand value was contributed by technology-related brands (a definition that includes telecoms and online retailers), up from a third in 2006. (See end of article for information about the report's methodology.)



Amazon achieved the highest dollar value growth of all brands in the Top 100 ranking, increasing its brand value by $40.3 billion, an increase of 41.1%, to $139.3 billion. Rounding out the top 10 were AT&T, Visa, Tencent, IBM and McDonalds.



Apart from Amazon, only two U.S. retailers cracked the global top 25. Starbucks ranked No. 22, and The Home Depot came in at No. 24. Walmart ranked No. 31. (For the complete Top 100 ranking, click here.)



Retail was the fastest rising category overall, rising 14% in value over the last 12 months, driven by ecommerce brands such as Amazon and Alibaba which, like many native internet companies, continued to add physical stores to their sales channels. Overall the value growth of pure online retailers has increased 388% since 2006, while traditional retailers dropped 23% as they took longer to adapt their offering to include online.



Amazon came on top in the retail category. Its brand value of $139.3 billion was more than double Alibaba, which took the second position with a brand value of $59.1 billion. Here are the top 20 retail brands in the BrandZ report:



Top 20 Retail Brands



1. Amazon

2. Alibaba

3. The Home Depot

4. Walmart

5. Ikea

6. Costco

7. Lowe's

8. Ebay

9. Aldi

10. JD.com

11. Walgreens

12. CVS

13. 7-Eleven

14. Target

15. Tesco

16. Lidl

17. Carrefour

18. Woolworths

19. Kroger

20. Coles



The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking is now in its twelfth year. It combines measures of brand equity based on interviews with over three million consumers globally about thousands of global ‘consumer facing’ and business-to-business brands with a rigorous analysis of the financial and business performance of each company (using data from Bloomberg and Kantar Worldpanel) to separate the value that brand plays in driving business and shareholder value.



The ranking takes into account regional variations since, even for truly global brands, measures of brand contribution might differ substantially across countries.