Celebrating a decade of industry recognition, the Performance Marketing Awards reigned for a 10th time over Park Lane’s Grosvenor House Hotel last night (April 26), hosted in association with Bing Ads.

The true claim to royalty, however, is reserved for those deserved winners, who through innovation, intelligent partnerships, originality and creativity, took to the stage to accept one of the industry’s most highly-regarded accolades, presented by comedian Katherine Ryan.

Awards were available in 32 different categories this year; the majority selected by a panel of senior marketing experts, while a select few were cast to the industry as a whole to decide upon.

The full list of winners from the Performance Marketing Awards 2016 is now available to view here, and these are just some of the highlights that shone on the event’s landmark anniversary.

Golden moments

CJ Affiliate by Conversant was first to claim an award, taking the Advertiser Innovation prize for a campaign with travel company TUI, demonstrating intelligent use of data capture and analysis to reimagine the brand’s work with publishers.

The pair’s prowess within the realms of affiliate – a crucial aspect of performance marketing – was cemented when they later rose again to take the title of Best-Managed Affiliate Programme.

Affiliate Window claimed Network or Platform Innovation for its cross-device tracking - designed with publishers in mind – returning shortly after to claim Best Content Marketing Campaign for its work with Topshop in the prelude to London Fashion Week.

The light was then cast on VoucherCodes.co.uk as winner of the Publisher Innovation category, while TVTY was lauded for flexing the Best Performance Marketing Technology in its TV ad-synching tech for moment marketing. The lofty title of Best Agency was awarded to 7thingsmedia, praised for impressive turnover, good knowledge of partner needs and global initiatives.

Many strings

Showcasing the diversity of practices under the banner of performance were the channel-specific categories.

Crave & Lamb’s online acquisition work with Coral saw the group lauded for having the Most Effective Paid Social Campaign tapping to the 2015 sporting calendar with targeted promotions, while an innovative partnership with automobile company Renault UK resulting in a “significant” conversion rate increase was enough to earn Manning Gottlieb OMD Best Lead Generation Campaign.

Two victories for the rise of real-time display came with media agency UM London winning Best Use of Data for driving 10,000 new members to The Economist by targeting ads based on existing customer data, and Winning Most Effective Use of Programmatic, Rakuten Marketing’s display near doubled new customer revenue year on year for The Body Shop.  

A charitable victory came by the way of National Trust, whose data-lead ‘Optimise and Innovate’ campaign helped the company steal an all-time record year for membership, with Tradedoubler entering into the picture with consumer data specialist DLG, where a comprehensive and intelligent growth of a mature affiliate programme earned the accolade for Best in Finance.

But that wasn’t the last we saw of the Swedish-founded performance marketing network, which was handed the award for Global Excellence for its multinational affiliate campaign with technology company HP.

Leading lights

It was then time to place the spotlight on the individuals whose talents, ethics and personality have gained them the recognition of their marketing peers throughout the last year.

The Rising Star title for 2016 was given to Severiano Catindig-Stagg, a senior account manager at Optimus Performance Marketing showing remarkable aptitude, and the most praised in the peer-voted category among six incredibly hard-working and worthy contenders.

An exclusive for 2016 and the 10th Awards, the Industry Ambassador award was introduced to identify a highly-respected and influential figure embodying the key principles of a successful performance marketer.

This was justly awarded to Steven Brown, a veteran of the performance industry having been chief executive of buy.at leading its growth from 2000 until its acquisition by AOL in 2008.

Brown has since become a “passionate” investor and board advisor to a number of leading companies in the sector, as well as helming Linkdex for two of its formative years.

Industry choices

With the end of the award-giving in sight, the long-waited, peer-voted Industry Choice categories were announced, sponsored by Optimus Performance Marketing.

Indicating that the travel company is a valuable client to work alongside, the Industry Choice of Advertiser saw the return of TUI to the stage, commended for use of technology, partner relations and high ROI. TopCashback was regarded Industry Choice of Publisher, praised for “consistent performance” and account management.

For one final time Affiliate Window was in the spotlight as Industry Choice of Network for a fourth year running – praised for “excellent response time, cutting-edge solutions” among other attributes.

For its “individual approach, game-changing standards and forward-thinking platform”, the last win in the Industry Choice category went to Performance Horizon, handed the Industry Choice of Tech award.  

And then just one award remained as the tenth annual Performance Marketing Awards came to an end; the Facebook sponsored Grand Prix was presented to MEC & Qriously with Vodafone for its exceptional Summer 4G campaign.

Confounded by an earlier win in Best in Mobile, this campaign represented a playbook in effective mobile geo-targeting, driving half a million additional visits to the carrier’s site.

View the entire list of winners here. Photos from the night will be released within the next few days, as well as winners interviews to follow on PerformanceIN later – remember to share your best moments from the night with #PMA16.

European Awards: entries close Friday

It doesn’t all end there, this year the Performance Marketing Awards debuts its first European-exclusive award ceremony, co-hosted with Performance Marketing Insights: Europe in Amsterdam from July 4-5. 

Entries close this Friday (April 29) - find out more about entering the European Awards here.