Chinese media owners, especially the internet ones, are quickly catching up with their international counterparts in terms of advertising income.

According to the Top 30 Global Media Owners report released by return-on-investment agency Zenith, Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings Ltd saw its advertising revenue soar by 697 percent between 2012 and 2016, coming only second to Twitter Inc's 734 percent growth and dislodging Facebook Inc. Search engine Baidu Inc's advertising income grew by 190 percent during the period.

Zenith has been publishing the list since 2007. The list this year is based only on media owners' advertising revenue, excluding revenues from all other activities.

Three Chinese media owners entered the top 30 list: Baidu, Tencent and China Central Television, which came in fourth, 14th and 20th, respectively. With that, China claimed the second-biggest number of media owners in the ranking, second only to the United States.

The US dominates the list, with 20 of the companies. Google Inc's parent company, Alphabet Inc, together with Facebook, took the first two positions.

Global internet advertising is expected to grow by 13 percent to reach $205 billion in 2017, accounting for 36.9 percent of all advertising expenditure.

Social media advertising is the fastest-growing component of internet advertising, increasing by 51 percent in 2016.

Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith, says that the internet advertising platforms are actually "setting the pace for global adspend growth" at present.

Chinese media owners are pacing the global trend, with two of the three companies included in the ranking being internet companies.

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