Last night (July 4) the European Performance Marketing Awards received its grand debut, recognising the achievements of companies within the performance marketing sphere across the continent.
Amsterdam’s Hotel Krasnopolsky played host to the inaugural ceremony, organised together with Performance Marketing Insights: Europe, welcoming contestants from across the world to showcase and reward the most exceptional campaigns, technology and teams in performance-based marketing.
The full list of winners from this landmark ceremony is now available to view here, and we’ll provide just some of our highlights of the evening below.
In the spotlight
Digital agency Forward3D opened the proceedings, taking a win for Best Performance Marketing Agency in recognition of the developments and expansion it went through in 2015.
For its work among partners in the industry, French SEO and PPC specialist JVWEB was awarded Best Publisher, while a joint prize for Best Performance Marketing Technology went to Ingenious Technologies AG and ZooRoyal.
A three-pronged victory was celebrated by RetailMeNot, Voucherscodes.co.uk and Thorntons, lauded for their achievements in Best Use of Mobile, while financial advertising specialist financeAds scooped Best Affiliate Marketing Network amid heavyweight competition.
Success stories
As the night continued, we saw a number of strategic partnerships gaining some much-deserved recognition. UEFA Champions League sponsor HTC saw TVTY seize on its moment marketing prowess, with in-game ads scoring it the latter a Best Use of Data award.
Effective teamwork was behind a Best-Managed Affiliate Programme win for Performics and Staples, while Argos and CJ Network landed Best in Retail for boosting their customer proposition and bringing programme growth to a decade high.
BT and Affiliate Window’s moment to shine came as they collected Best in Technology & Telecoms, far surpassing their annual targets and demonstrating the weight of a long-standing partnership between the two.
Winning campaigns
It was then time to shine a light on those individual campaigns that surpassed the wealth of competition in the judging panel’s eyes..
JVWEB returned with French publisher Viapresse to win Best Multi-Channel Campaign, packaging real-time bidding, product feed optimisation and Gmail Ads into a multi-channel campaign for yet another lift in revenue year on year.
Two victories rewarded the performance marketing successes within the hospitality industry, with the Best Paid Search/Media Campaign going to NetBooster for its work with hotel company Accor, while the Best Programmatic Campaign was awarded to MeliaHotels and Sociomantic.
The spotlight was then turned to UML London and Proximity and their new Best Lead Generation Campaign award, as well as Videobeat’s praise in the Best Retargeting Campaign.
Publishers’ choice
The final batch of prizes recognised networks and platforms across Europe in a fiercely competitive category.
Praised for its unparalleled market knowledge and account management, affilinet was picked as the Publishers’ Choice of Network or Platform in Germany. The title for the Netherlands went to zanox, marking the second win of the night for the performance powerhouse, having landed Best in Travel & Leisure with Hotels.com.
Within the Spanish market, the local Publishers’ Choice of Network was TradeTracker, lauded for its relationship-focused approach, user-friendly software and attentive service. NetAffiliation triumphed in France; a key part of the Kwanko Group, the group earned praised for speedy service and efficiency.
For Amsterdam-based ClickDealer, it was a victory in the Publishers’ Choice of Network or Platform for Rest of the World, awarded for its international team of dedicated professionals, leading tech solutions and strategic approach. For the Rest of Europe, this title was handed to Linkwise - the largest affiliate network in its home market of Greece.
Congratulations to all our winners!
If you missed the awards night, view the entire list of winners here, the winners’ Vine reactions here, while you can re-watch our live-stream via Periscope here. Photos from the night will be released within the next few days, but in the meantime you can share your best moments from the night with #EPMA16.