The folks at IAB as well as players in the online advertising industry seem active and busy these days, even though most of us would be thinking of July as a slow month. The MIXX Awards 2008 have reached an all-time high level of submissions – check out the IAB press release below.
New York, New York(July 22, 2008)—The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that submissions to the fourth annual MIXX Awards hit record levels, surpassing 2007’s entries by nearly 40 percent. Since their founding in 2005, the MIXX Awards, the only advertising awards to recognize creativity and effectiveness, have evolved into the most prestigious interactive advertising award and have attracted a distinguished cross-section of the world’s top brands and agencies.
· This year’s entries include submissions from hundreds of agencies—“native digital” shops and large traditional ones as well.
· These agencies have submitted the work they have done on behalf of their clients who encompass every major vertical industry—including blue-chip brands, luxury products and services, pharmaceuticals, automotive, financial, consumer packaged goods , entertainment and technology.
· The campaigns will be evaluated in 18 categories by a cross-industry panel of judges that includes senior executives from agencies, publishers, and marketing organizations deliberating together—an industry first.
“The sheer quantity of submissions and the caliber of the marketers and agencies represented is a testament to the increasingly critical role that interactive advertising plays in marketers’ media plans,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, the trade association for interactive media in the United States. “To think that this awards show is only in its fourth year and has already attained levels of submissions that are on a par with long established shows is nothing short of a revolution—showing how far interactive advertising has come. Now the real excitement begins as our judges see which work among this extraordinary lineup will make it to the final round.”
Winners of the IAB’s 2008 MIXX Awards will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on September 23, near the start of Advertising Week, a gathering of the media and marketing industries that typically draws 10,000 professionals to conferences, seminars, recruiting events, and parties celebrating advertising and its evolution. The host for this year’s MIXX Awards is one of the industry’s keenest observers and practitioners, Rob Norman, Group M CEO, whose regular riffs on all things interactive have made him the natural emcee for the evening’s ceremonies.
Last year’s MIXX Award winners included many of the most prominent brand marketers in the United States, including Anheuser Busch, American Airlines, The Coca-Cola Company, BMW, Royal Caribbean, Showtime and Unilever, as well as leading agencies such as Universal McCann, Ogilvy, McKinney, Digitas, BBDO and Mindshare. In 2007, the gala’s ultimate honor, Best in Show, went to Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners, San Francisco, for its super-rich media campaign for Hewlett-Packard, “The Computer is Personal Again.”
For more information and to view the complete gallery of the 2007 MIXX Finalists, please visit: www.mixx-awards.com/gallery.
About the IAB:
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) represents over 375 leading interactive companies that actively engage in and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the continuing growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research, and educates marketers, agencies, and media companies, as well as the wider business community, about the value of interactive advertising.
