The Drum Digital Trading Awards 2018 shortlist: what the judges said
The industry is taking a more intense focus on understanding clients' objectives, according to the judges for The Drum Digital Trading Awards, as the shortlisted nominees are announced.
SpotX, vice president of European Strategy, Joanna Burton was impressed with some of the entries that dug into the detail with their media planning on how best to reach their target audiences.
She said: “Often this involved applying technology as well as clever thinking to make the most of their programmatic advertising budget. Very often these clever campaigns really delivered for their clients driving not only sales, but also behaviour change in some cases.
“We also had some interesting entries featuring branded content, combined with programmatic video advertising which demonstrated some more longer-term thinking whilst delivering powerful results for brands.”
The finalists for Best Use of Omni-channel; include: Rakuten Marketing for Bally; Intilery.com Ltd for Sofology; House of Kaizen for McAfee; Precis Digital AB for HBO Europe; Tug Agency for Tech21; Merkle | Periscopix for Legal & General; Akbank for Programmatic TV and the7stars for Bacs.
Another category that stood out for the judges was the best Use of Creativity. The Programmatic Advisory’s, client partner, James Diba explained that data is often accredited with killing creativity, but in a world with more data than ever before, the entries that he saw proved that creativity is alive.
He said: “It was fantastic to see how brands and their partners are bringing to life some truly engaging creative concepts, and utilising data and technology in really clever ways to deliver those creative to their target audiences across digital channels at scale.
“When creativity is used in combination with data, it can deliver powerful results if planned and activated in the right way.”
The finalists for Best Use of Creativity include: Shazam, Carat/Merkle Periscopix for Diageo Ciroc Vodka; Amplifi UK for Very.co.uk; Justpremium and Carat for Xbox; MediaCom WorldWide for Bose; ADZ Creative & Digital Limited for Renault Retail Group; PHD for Virgin Atlantic and the7stars for Atlantic Record.
Chairperson of the judging panel and director, Lara Izlan, and the advertising platforms and data solutions for Auto Trader UK, said: “There was an intense focus on really trying to understand the clients objectives. And then designing the measurements and the tracking to really tell the story around how those objectives were met. That is fantastic because gets that what it is that we are trying to achieve with the campaign, as opposed to relying on standard metrics.
She concluded: “I was really pleased by the calibre of the entries this year. There is a lot of thoughtfulness, innovation, particularity around the use of measurement, tracking and reporting results that were relevant to the business objectives of the brand. As an industry I believe we are moving in the right direction.
You can view the full list of nominations here. The awards ceremony will take place 31 May at the Park Plaza, Westminster, London, you can book your table now online.
The awards are partnered by IAB UK and sponsored by: The Trade Desk, Tapad and Aspire