Digiday Awards: And the winner is … audio!
When Digiday announced the finalists for their 2018 Awards, we were thrilled to see that AdsWizz made the cut for not one, but two, categories: Best Use of Mobile, for our ShakeMe™ audio ad format, and Best Publishing Platform, for our dynamic ad insertion, our audio ad serving solution, and our audio-first SPP, AudioMax. The Digiday Awards program is the industry’s annual recognition of the companies, campaigns and creative that are modernizing media and marketing.
The reason we’re so excited goes beyond AdsWizz as a company. It’s an important signal for the audio advertising industry as a whole. This news goes hand in hand with our recent DRUM Digital Trading Award win for Best Overall Technology for Programmatic Trading, for our end-to-end audio ad platform. Our audio-first programmatic platform beat out other marquee finalists with programmatic solutions focusing on display and video, including Google, Rubicon and The Trade Desk. Our nod from Digiday for two more prestigious awards is yet another affirmation that we’re living during an historic time for audio.
What does it all mean? We’re on the cusp of an exploding wave of audio advertising, thanks to increased streaming of music, podcasts, digital radio, and voice-activated speakers. In fact, the digital audio advertising industry has grown 42 percent year-over-year, giving brands and agencies new and creative ways to engage with listeners.
Back to the Digiday Awards. Our first finalist nomination comes in the Best Use of Mobile category – which highlights a brand messaging campaign that successfully engaged audiences on mobile. AdsWizz ShakeMe™ campaigns were nominated alongside accomplished brands such as Mars Pedigree, Dominos and Viacom.
ShakeMe™ is transforming the audio advertising industry by offering an innovative way to connect with listeners. Eight ShakeMe™ campaigns ran on iHeart during 2018 in the US, with major brands including Wells Fargo, BMW, Jack in the Box, Best Buy, and Exxon Mobil. Each of these campaigns used the AdsWizz ShakeMe™ audio ad format to encourage users to engage with an ad by simply shaking their phone. And each resulted in significantly more engagement vs traditional mobile display ads that run with audio campaigns.
We’re also thrilled to be a finalist for the Best Publishing Platform award, which highlights a technology that’s successful in helping publishers improve their business through advertising and/or content distribution. Nominees for the category include another set of heavy hitters: Microsoft News, Hewlett Packard, GE, and NBC News Digital. The AdsWizz publishing platform ranks among the elite in enabling audio publishers to programmatically monetize their content and capitalize on what’s become an audio-first society.
The finalists were judged based on demonstrated success during the past 12 months. Each section was scored based on creativity, innovative thinking, consumer value and results related to KPIs. The winners will be announced at the Digiday Awards Gala on Nov. 14, 2018 at The Lighthouse in New York City. You can see the full list of awards and finalists here.
Whatever the outcome, the team here at AdsWizz sees this as a huge win for audio. Best of luck to all the Digiday finalists.
