After two years as runner-up, Oprah Winfrey was named the Most Powerful Celebrity by Forbes, heading the six women and four men who make up the top 10. This is the fifth time the former talk show host has headed the annual ranking of 100 celebrities. Singer Lady Gaga came in second, followed by director/producer Steven Spielberg and singers Beyonce and Madonna. Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who was No. 1 last year, dropped to 12th place.

With earnings of USD$77 million from June 2012 to 2013, Winfrey was not the highest earning celebrity, an honour that went to Madonna who made USD$125 million, but Forbes said Winfrey’s position in Hollywood and her presence in the press, on television and in social media propelled her to the No. 1 spot.

Forbes based a celebrity’s earnings on income from tours, books, contracts, endorsements, movies and residuals. Each celebrity was given a marketability score, developed by California market research firm E-Poll. It used Starcount, a Singapore-based company that looks at 11 social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to determine their presence in social media. The full list of the top 100 celebrities can be found at www.forbes.com/celebs.

“There is nobody else with that kind of consistency and power,” said Dorothy Pomerantz of Forbes.com. “There are only three people who have been on every single one of our lists since 1999. It is Oprah, Howard Stern and Steven Spielberg. In today’s world celebrities have this enormous ability to reach out to their fans, who really are their customers, and to sell their product, which is really themselves. If they don’t take advantage of that it hurts them.”