The Quantcast Digital Advertising Awards celebrate customers’ ads demonstrating exceptional creativity, technical excellence, and engaging design. These ads are light, encrypted, ad-choice supported, and non-invasive, which means they load quickly, respect data privacy and security, and avoid disruptive tactics that detract from a user’s experience on the internet. But these winners go beyond that criteria with their ads, successfully capturing the attention of viewers and making a lasting impression.
The nominated ads were chosen from thousands of digital ads designed by our Creative Services team or run on the Quantcast Platform, and the winners were determined in a month-long global competition, voted on by the public.
We are honored to announce the following winners of our second annual Quantcast Digital Advertising Awards in the categories of Best Brand Awareness Ad, Best Rich Media Ad, Best Storytelling Ad, and Most Compelling Ad.
Best Brand Awareness Ad
FitFlop‘s ad builds familiarity through distinctive messaging, establishing strong brand recall with their specific audiences.
Any great ad that is designed for brand awareness needs to meet three key criteria:
- Clearly viewable brand name
- Visuals that are appealing
- Memorable taglines
The FitFlop flip-flop is clearly placed in the center of the creative in a bright red color, making it visually pop. The animation in different frames effectively features both a close-up of the product and the product in use. The tagline of this ad, “like yoga for your feet,” communicates the comfort of the shoe in a creative way.
Best Rich Media Ad
The Islands of Guernsey ad effectively communicates complex messages and incorporates the use of interactive and immersive advanced features. It creates a truly unique user engagement experience, going beyond the bounds of standard display ads.
Rich media ads are an extremely effective way to promote a brand. The important elements in a rich media ad creative are:
- Beautiful eye-catching imagery
- Clear branding
- Clear messaging
The Islands of Guernsey creative features the beautiful imagery of alluring activities, enabling the viewer to visualize a future vacation. The static placement of the ‘Islands of Guernsey’ logo on every frame helps catch the attention of a viewer, and the call to action button is clearly placed. All in all, this creative is extremely compelling to help consumers remember the Islands of Guernsey as a possible destination for their next vacation. The beauty of this ad generated strong engagement of viewers with 28.7% engaged in the content by either watching more than ¼ of the video, clicking through hover, or touching the creative.
Best Storytelling Ad
Xucker solves their storytelling challenge as if it were an art form. The brand walks its audience through a carefully constructed narrative that aims to humanize the brand and emotionally connect with the audience.
Some of the strongest storytelling creatives help a viewer visualize the product being used as a way to make them remember the brand and its purpose. The important part of storytelling in creative is:
- Clear brand and product association
- Clear messaging
- Frames that are in a logical order
This Xucker ad walks the viewer through the process of brewing a cup of chai tea with enticing details. Each frame highlights a step of the process, creating a desire for a cup of tea. This ad was so appealing that it also drove a very high click-through rate (CTR) of 3.19%, which is more than 10x higher than the average CTR on an ad.
Most Compelling Ad
Autotrader’s ad drives substantial engagement while achieving lasting brand recognition.
A compelling ad is one that promotes a brand and its products easily. It is important for a compelling ad to have:
- Clear brand name
- Simple, memorable words and phrases
- Easy-to-read call to action
- Clear images that illustrate a product or service
This winning Autotrader ad features the brand logo centered at the top of the ad. The message, “most cars, best deals,” is simple and easy to understand, and the CTA button of “shop now” is very clear. By shuffling through vehicle images quickly, the ad displays a range of options for consumers.
Congratulations to our winners! If you’d like to view all of the nominated ads, check them out here. And if you’d like to have help with managing your advertising campaigns or creating effective ads, you can learn about our different service options to fit your needs.
Learn more
Read this blog post to get tips for matching creative with marketing funnel messaging. For more advice on creating a successful advertising campaign, click here. You can also download our Advertising All Stars ebook.