Unilever’s Sarah Mansfield wins Digital Trading Leader of Year and Konga scoops Grand Prix at The Drum’s Digital Trading Awards
Unilever’s vice president of Global Media Europe Sarah Mansfield has won Digital Trading Leader of the Year at The Drum’s Digital Trading Awards, held in association with AppNexus in London this evening (29 April).
Mansfield has spearheaded the adoption of programmatic trading at significant scale across some of the biggest brands in the UK, driving efficiencies in targeting, relevance and cost. She also had a major role in ensuring lessons learned from digital trading haven’t been siloed but embedded across the business to ensure agile thinking across all channels.
Konga.com scooped the Grand Prix for its work with 7thingsmedia on its Pioneering Paid Search in Nigeria campaign. Commenting on the Grand Prix award DTA judge and Rockabox founder and group chief executive James Booth said: “In today's world of programmatic delivery, it's easy to forget how important some of the less 'in vogue' forms of digital marketing can be. When delivered correctly, SEO remains a massively powerful tool that has the potential to produce something very special every now and then.
"Tonight's winner is such an example. Its stand-out results driving tremendous revenue uplifts from an unfamiliar market resonated with all the judges, reminding us that pure hard graft and focus mixed with significant knowledge, will deliver. And this is what this campaign is all about. A breath of fresh air in an algorithmic world; brilliantly well done in every sense."
Meanwhile MoneySupermarket picked up the Chairman’s Award for its #EpicStrut Paid Social support of Brand ATL activity. It also picked up the Best Paid Social award for the same campaign.
DTA chair Alex Tait said he picked MoneySupermarket for its “intelligent” and “innovative” approach to digital trading in solving a business problem.
“As a market leader they reversed a decline in paid search Share of Voice not just by paying more but by driving efficiency through innovation and reducing reliance on traditional paid search. The results speak for themselves with year-on-year revenue up 24 per cent with CPCs down 38.5 per cent and number 1 paid share of voice as measured in Hitwise,” he said.
Dentsu-Aegis-owned iProspect was awarded Most Effective Media Agency, while Innovative Publisher of the Year went to the Financial Times.
Publicis-owned VivaKi scooped Best Trading Desk, while Periscopix won Best Digital Trading Team of the year.
The Best Use of Creativity award went to Camelot and its agencies Collective and iProspect for their work on its Happy 20th birthday Camelot - 20 guaranteed millionaires, with Infectious Media picking up a Commendation for its work for B&Q.
Best Video Campaign went to Cineworld Cinemas and Starcom Mediavest Group for its work promoting the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Best Mobile Campaign went to Payments Council and the7stars for PAYM, with iProspect receiving the Commendation for its mobile search targeting for Asda.
Periscopix also won the Best Use of Performance category for it’s the Surround Sound campaign for OVO Energy, beating off stiff competition from the likes of DigitasLBi – which received a Commendation for its work with Stena Line – and Agenda21, Doubleclick, Infectious Media, iProspect and RocketFuel.
Meanwhile Best Branding Campaign went to Infectious Media and John Lewis – beating strong contenders Burberry and Dentsu-Aegis-owned Amnet.
Most Effective Use of Data category went to Media iQ for its Travelodge Transforming Travel Through Insight campaign.
Most Effective Programmatic Media Partnership was scooped by Tubemogul for Lenovo’s Spread Holiday Cheer campaign.
Meanwhile Best Overall Technology for Programmatic Trading went to Rockabox, with Tubemogul and MediaMath both receiving Commendations.
Commenting on the Awards The Drum's managing director Andy Oakes said: "The standard of this year’s entries has been remarkable. It's been fantastic how the adtech world has embraced this program and really established the DTAs as a hallmark of excellence in the industry."
DTA judge chair Alex Tait added: "The Digital Trading Awards is a great celebration of all things programmatic in the digital trading space but actually I think it’s important that we have an awards that recognise an area where we are global leaders in many respects.
"The consensus across the judges was that the entries were a really good mix of innovation and demonstration of business results."
For the full list of winners visit the dedicated website.
The awards, now in their second year, were sponsored by Accordant Media, Adform, Audience2Media, eXelate, Index Media Partners, Integral Ad Science, LiveRail, Millennial Media, Quantcast, Sphere Digital Recruitment, StrikeAd, Tremor Video and TubeMogul.