Apple and Google have again been named as the world’s two most valuable brands, but the big news is that Amazon is now ranked third after achieving brand value growth of 56% over the past year, while Facebook’s valuation declined by 6%.

According to Interbrand’s 2018 Best Global Brands report, Apple’s brand value grew by 16% year-on-year to $214.48bn, and Google’s by 10% to $155.5bn, with Amazon coming in third at $100.8bn.

That meant the US e-commerce giant was the fastest growing brand in this year’s rankings, while other top growing brands included Netflix (45%), which entered the rankings only last year, Gucci (30%), cloud computing firm Salesforce.com (23%) and Louis Vuitton (23%), which was also the most valuable luxury brand (#18, $28bn).

Now in its 19th year, Interbrand’s annual report assigns a dollar value to each brand based on factors such as brand strength, financial performance and the role the brand plays in purchase decisions.

More than half of the best global brands came from five sectors: automotive (16), technology (13), financial services (12), luxury (9) and FMCG (9), although luxury was the new top growing sector (42%), replacing retail, which nonetheless continued to perform impressively (36%).

Interestingly, in a top ten dominated by US tech firms, Facebook’s value dipped by 6% to $45.17bn to take it to ninth place – perhaps a sign of the difficulties it has faced this year over well-publicised criticism of its handling of consumer data.

Rounding out the top ten this year were Microsoft at #4 ($92.71bn), Coca-Cola ($66.34bn), Samsung ($59.89bn), Toyota ($53.4bn), Mercedes-Benz ($48.6bn) and McDonalds at #10 ($43.41bn).

Elsewhere, music-streaming service Spotify made it to the list for the first time at #92 with a brand valuation of $5.17bn, while Japanese carmaker Subaru was another new entrant at #100 ($4.21bn).

Banking giant HSBC was the most valuable British brand, ranked #46 ($11.2bn), while the other British contenders were Jaguar Land Rover (#78), Mini (#90), Burberry (#94) and Johnnie Walker (#97).

Sourced from Interbrand; additional content by WARC staff