The International Performance Marketing Awards (IPMAs) returned for it’s second edition last night (October 15), welcoming over 300 performance marketers in celebrating the excellence and recognition of the industry’s growth and innovation on a global scale.
Revealed live on the official IPMA Twitter account and now available to view below, the night’s victors championed within 25 categories, each reflecting specific developments within the industry whilst rewarding the commitment to unrivalled campaign performances and commitment to pioneering industry standards internationally.
Once again, the intense task of deciding the worthy winners at the IPMAs fell to the awards esteemed panel of judges, represented by experts from international companies such as Expedia, GroupM, MC&C International and Fox Sports, among others.
Without further ado, you can view the winners of the IPMAs in full below.
Regional Awards
USA – Best Managed Affiliate Programme
Winner – HP & Awin
Through proactive account management, the implementation of advanced tracking strategies, strategic placement planning and innovative campaign tactics, Awin and HP sustained the growth of their partnership and the success of their affiliate partners, using what the judges called “new-level thinking”.
USA – Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy
Winner – CJ and Hotels.com: Mutually Rewarding Partnerships
Recent market shifts and increased competition saw CJ Affiliate and Hotels.com form an innovative industry-first system that measured and rewarded publishers up to 63 desirable customer parameters, using a series of KPIs and TopCashback’s real-time data to exceed advertisers’ goals and ROI uptake by over 50%.
Western Europe – Best Managed Affiliate Programme
Winner – Figleaves and Rakuten Marketing
With a mission to broaden the affiliate programme to address every stage of the customer journey, Figleaves and Rakuten Marketing nurtured a stronger mix of publishers to attract new customers to the site with glowing results, boosting tenancy spend by 454% compared to the previous year.
Western Europe – Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy
Winner – Battle of the Telco’s: Vodafone, Wavemaker & GumGum
Wavemaker and GumGum combined market leading technology and data targeting to ensure Vodafone won the ‘battle of the telco’s’ for its iPhone X launch. Pre-order sales alone reached 98% on launch weekend, with sales targets driving 30% uplift year-on-year.
Eastern Europe – Best Managed Affiliate Programme
Winner – Born2Be & Awin
Beating CPA targets by more than 100% and ROI affiliate activities increasing 200% since launch, Born2Be partnered with Awin, utilising what judges remarked as “great use of segmentation” to offer affiliates flexible commission based around contribution and content-based affiliate activity while targeting new customers.
Eastern Europe – Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy
Winner – Awin: Steal Alert in Zalando Lounge
Online shopping and members-only club Zalando Lounge launched its affiliate programme with Awin following exceptional growth in recent months. Publishers were rewarded for generating both new leads and sales, supported by Awin’s impressive partnerships with influencers that drove newly-registered members for Zalando.
LATAM – Best Managed Affiliate Programme
Winner – Experiencias Xcaret: Summer 2017 – Summer 2018
In what judges hailed as a “well managed and executed programme,” Experiencias Xcaret delivered a combination of strategies in affiliate to achieve ROI of over 1500%. As the travel trends began to change, the new flow of tourism forced the company to target other emerging markets to encourage tourists to discover new experiences thanks to their 3,000 affiliates around the world.
MENA – Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy
Winner – Sun and Sand Sport Affiliates & TradeTracker
Utilising TradeTracker’s experience and publisher relationships within the MENA region via “good influencer management”, Middle East retailer Sun and Sand Sports was able to increase its brand awareness and transactions by over 268%.
APAC – Best Managed Affiliate Programme
Winner – Dell Australia Affiliate Campaign Managed by APD
Dell’s Australian affiliate campaign out-performed every other nation in the world in terms of ROI this financial year and resulted in year-on-year revenue growth of 24%. APD’s strong affiliate relationship with Dell Australia saw them exceed expectations and beat their targets.
APAC – Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy
Winner – RevLifter & Vision Direct – Personalising Eyewear
Steering its AI and data-driven capabilities to provide increased value to the voucher code channel, RevLifter beat all expectations by matching its personalised coupon page with eyewear brand Vision Direct’s in-house solution, selling eyewear based on the UV index “outside your door!”
Best Managed Global Affiliate Programme
Winner – NET-A-PORTER & Rakuten Marketing
Luxury fashion brand NET-A-PORTER and Rakuten Marketing’s 11-year partnership played a vital role in increasing campaign performance in a rapidly changing marketplace, driving huge sales growth globally during the judging period. The programme retained exclusivity whilst capturing new customers and extending their reach, resulting in 11% of NET-A-PORTER’s total sales coming from affiliate.
Campaign Based Awards
Best Paid Social Campaign
Winner – Merkle | Periscopix: Driving in-app registrations for reed.co.uk
Working with reed.co.uk, Merkle | Periscopix boosted the site’s customer acquisition via its mobile job search app, utilising made-for-platform creatives and video ads to target younger audiences. In addition to reed.co.uk’s 206% investment in social app campaigns year-on-year, they smashed expectations with in-app registrations growth of 887%.
Best Industry Collaboration
Winner – Ensight for Vodafone by Wavemaker and Flashtalking
Recognising the importance of understanding how media and communications affect consumers at each stage of the purchase journey, the two companies created their own algorithmic attribution solution – radically changing their approach paid off as Vodafone saw more than 8,500 incremental sales in the first nine months and a £8.3 million incremental revenue increase.
Best Influencer Marketing Campaign
Winner – The Goat Agency: Formula E
Challenged by Formula E to make them the most innovative and digitally focused mass market sport in the industry, The Goat Agency delivered 60 million video views on carefully curated customisable content from influencers attending the racing season.
Best Use of Programmatic
Winner – Wavemaker: Have I Not Got Fake News For You
Competing against Vodafone’s important message around fake news, Wavemaker got clever with its strategy in order to win back brand safety, developing processes that enabled it to react in real-time to stories that could be damaging for the company. Employing smart use of programmatic ensured brand safety didn’t impact sales performance.
Best Paid Search Campaign
Winner – Merkle | Periscopix: Making Paid Search real-time with the power of Tweets
Merging technology, creativity and innovation, Merkle | Periscopix industry first automation tool ‘Magpie’ paired Twitter’s live and public data with bespoke machine learning to create personalised ads in real-time, placing the platform at the forefront of paid search marketing.
Best Use of Data
Winner – CJ Affiliate and NMPi: Hitting the Back of the Net for Fanatics
NMPi and CJ Affiliate launched a bidding strategy that leveraged the power of in-game moments. Clever use of real-time data and sensible deployment amounted in a great initial return and cost-effective results, achieving 5.55% revenue year-on-year while reducing cost of sale by 9% within the same period.
General Awards
Best SaaS Platform
Winner – Shoptimised – Full Control Over Product Feeds
In what judges called “a genius idea”, Shoptimised SaaS platform enabled retailers, brands and agencies to fully optimise Google’s Product Feeds, cutting out the assistance of clients or developers. By providing automated AdWords reporting and a unique Efficiency Audit, Shoptimised increased Google Shopping impressions by 300% and reduced wasted budgets by 23%.
Best Performance Marketing Technology
Winner – Partnerize Partner Management Platform
Following its rebrand, Partnerize transformed the platform to ensure that clients can capitalise on all of the key business opportunities, leveraging incredible initiatives, particularly in payment and artificial intelligence.
Best Performance Marketing Agency
Winner – Acceleration Partners
With a dedicated publisher development team to source the right publishers for its clients, business development and a unique Performance Partnerships framework, Acceleration Partners has to date successfully driven $1.5 billion affiliate revenue under management for client programmes while maintaining a flexible work/life culture as a business.
Best Full-Service Affiliate Network
Winner – Awin
Driven by the desire to exceed expectations, with a focus on service and technology, the network is deservedly collecting this award. Generating £12 billion in revenue for its advertisers last financial year, Awin remains a pure play network as it continues to commit and invest in the growing affiliate industry.
Best CPA Network
Winner – Optimise Media
The network’s ‘right place right time’ ethos when connecting brands and consumers helped them deliver $1 billion in online sales for advertisers and win Best Performance Marketing Campaign or Strategy for LATAM and APAC at the 2017 International Performance Marketing Awards.
Industry Choice
Industry Choice of Technology
Winner – Affise
Using the most innovative and advanced technology to offer clients the best solutions for managing and optimising advertising campaigns, Affise’s versatile platform boosts performance while transforming the traditional vision on affiliate marketing.
Industry Choice of Agency
Winner – Acceleration Partners
Backed by a creative and supportive team, Acceleration Partners’ roots in business development principles, full transparency and better brand alignment coupled with its committed strategy to develop meaningful partnerships and maximising performance marketing activity makes them a deserved winner of Industry Choice of Agency.
Industry Choice of Network
Winner – CJ Affiliate by Conversant
CJ’s supporters rightly commended its new tools, insights, tracking methods, payment models and strategic teams, while its customer centric, data-driven approach showcases the value of affiliate shoppers. Using cutting edge solutions, the team continues to push the envelope to uncover the unprecedented value of the affiliate channel and all it has to offer.
Performance Marketing Awards 2019
If you missed out on the IPMAs this year, don’t worry, the Performance Marketing Awards returns for its 13th anniversary next year on April 30 at the Grosvenor House Hotel on London’s Park Lane with new categories to boast.