From fire eaters, contortionists and hula hoopers to jugglers, dancers and burlesque – attendees at Vibrant Media’s awards night were not short of a variety of unique entertainment at this annual event.

The awards, which champions the best use of Vibrant Media’s premium in-content contextual ad campaigns, was held at London’s exclusive Cirque le Soir club.

The winners were selected by a panel of industry experts from leading online publishing and media planning organisations including The Association of Online Publishers, Local World, Immediate Media, MEC Interaction, Mindshare UK, Neo@Ogilvy and Starcom Mediavest.

The key criteria to select the winners were the contextual relevancy of campaign strategies, the creative concept and execution of campaigns, and end users’ interaction with the advertising campaigns.

Thinking Beyond the Desktop

The three categories at the Vibrant Awards were Best Use of Image, won by Flora / Mindshare, Best Use of Rich Media, scooped by Clairol / Starcom MediaVest Group, and Best Cross-Platform Campaign, won by Knorr/ Mindshare.

The 2000-founded company, which gives brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements and branded content within text and images, holds the awards each year.

UK sales director at Vibrant Media, Tom Pepper, said the most successful marketers are clearly thinking beyond the desktop past of digital advertising and are using a range of formats to deploy more effective, engaging and interactive cross-platform campaigns.

He also stressed that marketers are recognising the value of giving more control over their campaign delivery to consumers; which he said ‘radically improves the user experience’, increases consumers’ interaction and engagement with the brand, and reduces wasted ad impressions.

Innovation & Trends

“Some of the online media industry’s foremost authorities volunteered their valuable time to select the most outstanding campaigns for this year’s Vibrant Awards, for which we’re very grateful,” Pepper said.

“This peer review recognised innovation, identified trends for the future of digital advertising and validated the exceptional creativity and strategic execution of this year’s winning contextual in-content ad campaigns – for which the winners are to be congratulated, and should feel very proud.”