The ninth annual Performance Marketing Awards, in association with Performance Horizon Group, welcomed hundreds of senior figures to Park Lane’s Grosvenor Place Hotel, seeing the industry congregate to celebrate a year of performance marketing.
The evening recognised companies, campaigns and individuals standing out amongst a roster of exceptional talent, demonstrating excellence within categories rewarding use of technology, insight, strategy and originality.
An independent panel of senior judges were appointed to identify those campaigns that stood out from the rest, across 26 highly sought-after categories.
Key snapshots
British Airways and Sociomantic rose to take Best Use of Customer Insight early on in the proceedings, with judges crediting an intelligent use of data, media and messaging within the airline’s personalised display advertising campaign.
It was a prosperous night for iProspect who were awarded Best Performance Marketing Agency, and picked up The Retail Award alongside Vizeum for their creative use of geo-location with client IKEA.
Thomas Cook Airlines and affilinet’s long-standing relationship yielded another successful outcome this year with the Travel & Leisure Award.
In the voted-for Industry Choice of Partner Awards, Affiliate Window was named Industry Choice of Network for a third year running, commended for its unrivalled tech and account management, and superior customer service across the entire team.
The affiliate marketing network also triumphed within the Network Innovation category, and championed both the Best Managed Affiliate Programme and Technology & Telecoms award for its campaign with BT. View the full list of winners here.
Rising stars
Chiefly a celebration of collaboration and teamwork, the ceremony also recognised those showing great promise and aptitude in the early stages of their career.
Whittled down to just six industry-voted talents, senior digital media manager at NOW TV, Jenna Pain, received the accolade of Hot Shot Rising Star, with voters marking her highly driven personality and impressive industry understanding. Rob Kabrovski, senior account manager, affiliate & CSE at iProspect came Highly Commended in a category of equally worthy individuals.
Grand Prix
The award-giving closed with a crescendo as digital and content marketing agency 8 Million Stories took the stage to receive the highly-regarded Grand Prix Award for a campaign embodying the innovation and creativity inherent in a flourishing industry.
The Grand Prix Award is decided by the panel of judges, tasked with agreeing on a single star entry that comprises the very best of performance marketing within the last 12 months.
Centered around the creation of unique, digital assets used for blogger outreach with designer fashion boutique Farfetch, the campaign increased awareness of the brand, leading to an increase in organic sessions and revenue.
Industry collaboration
Managing director of PMA organisers PerformanceIN, Sarah Parsonage, praised the progression and diversity of talent that the ninth annual industry awards showcased:
“This year’s contestants, not just those taking home an award but all highly commended and runners up, have shown exceptional levels of variety, invention and forward-thinking.
“The PMAs demonstrated more so than any other so far the standards set through interdisciplinary collaboration within performance marketing.
“Although the evening shone a spotlight on what has been accomplished in the last year, it was just as equally a celebration of the direction, scale and breadth our industry is now set to take.”
Further analysis of this year’s entries and the full list of winners can be found in the Performance Marketing Awards Book of the Night, which is available to view here.