This year’s winners exemplify the power of creativity, innovation and collaboration in modern marketing. From campaigns redefining audience engagement through tailored content to groundbreaking uses of technology like AI and automation, these entries set a new standard. Brand partnerships emerged as a driving force, unlocking new markets and opportunities, while compelling storytelling proved essential in creating memorable narratives across diverse formats. Each winner showcased remarkable brand visibility and a lasting impact, demonstrating how thoughtful strategies can leave a profound impression on audiences and elevate brands to new heights.

Epsilon’s collaboration with Currys set a benchmark in retail media. The campaign earned the Best Use of Retail Media award, by employing a full-funnel strategy combining display, online video and CTV to engage tech enthusiasts. Leveraging Currys’ first-party data and Epsilon’s CORE ID, the campaign built awareness and drove online and in-store sales. The strategy led to a 46% increase in conversions with an ROI of 3x and boosted in-store sales by 20%, attracting 56,000 visitors to Currys locations. This innovative approach positioned Currys’ TechHunters as a groundbreaking retail media solution, seamlessly blending audience targeting with measurable sales impact.

T Brand Studio’s international editorial team, part of New York Times Advertising, has set a new standard for branded content and earned Editorial Team of the Year. Despite being a small team of three, they achieved a 47% increase in global campaigns, producing award-winning work across podcasts, videos and written journalism. Highlights include campaigns for CREA, amplifying feminist and disability rights, and Wellcome, spotlighting health and climate change. Their podcasts for Audemars Piguet and L’Oréal ranked among the top on global charts, while their commitment to diversity and inclusion reshaped industry standards. Recognized with 11 industry awards and a Publisher Award, their impact continues to drive global growth.

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This year, the companies driving innovation in Europe focused on omnichannel strategies, including leaning on first-party data and AI-driven insights to improve targeting and audience engagement. The Digiday Awards Europe finalists also share a common theme of elevating user experiences to deliver more impactful technology and campaigns.

For instance, the Financial Times is a nominee in the Best Contextual Targeting Offering category for its innovative first-party contextual targeting platform. By leveraging a proprietary editorial knowledge graph with more than 700 FT-specific topics and thousands of nuanced concepts, the platform categorizes articles with AI technology, validated by human editors for unparalleled accuracy and relevance. This hybrid approach ensures ads are placed in highly suitable contexts, driving up to 50% higher engagement and improving brand suitability. The platform’s ability to seamlessly integrate third-party blocklists provides advertisers with critical insights, helping them recover valuable inventory while unlocking new engagement opportunities. 

Finalists in the Best Ad Tech Platform category include MiQ, which addresses the complexities of modern TV advertising. Its proprietary TV Intelligence platform leverages the industry’s largest and most diverse dataset, spanning more than 90 million devices globally, to deliver unmatched audience, campaign and competitor insights across linear TV, streaming and YouTube. By integrating data from 11 ACR sources and demographic datasets, MiQ empowers advertisers to optimize reach and frequency, identify underexposed audiences and make informed decisions about their media strategies. This data-driven precision allows brands to cut through the fragmentation of the TV landscape and reach their target audiences effectively and efficiently.

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