During the first night of ad:tech, Eyeblaster honored the winners of the 2009 Eyeblaster Awards. In its 8^th year, more than 75 campaigns from at least 15 markets globally were in the running for this year’s competition. The campaigns represented the best in digital advertising which crossed channels, borders, and formats, including long form video, homepage takeovers, and social media integration.

London Creative Agencies Feed and Hi-ReS!, along with Media Agency MEC Global, were recognized with the International People’s Choice Award for Chanel No.5’s global homepage takeover.

“Working on the Chanel project; making the vision of such an iconic brand a reality for their first online campaign was something really special,” said Managing Director of FEED, Rob Armstrong. “The end result was a campaign that took over the MSN homepage across 18 different countries, in 11 different languages, and received over 650 million impressions.

To now have this recognised by an Eyeblaster award makes it even more special.  Our thanks go to Hi-Res! for the beautiful graphics they supplied us, the team from MSN who flew over from Redmond to London to help us in the final manic weeks and the team from Eyeblaster London who helped us make this thing happen. Most of all, thanks to everyone who voted for us.  We hope everyone had a great night, thank you!”

The International Judge’s Choice Award was awarded to Creative Agency MediaFront and Media Agency Mediacom NO (Norway) for IKEA Set the Table .

“It is always rewarding to get recognition for our work and its extra special to receive this award when you look at the high quality of the Eyeblaster campaigns around the world,” said Sverre Stabell, interactive director at MediaFront. “We feel that the banner ad is underestimated, and we always aim to bring more into the banner. In the IKEA case, we wanted to give the users the ability to set the table themselves and get inspiration, directly in the banner – without having to go to a campaign site. And, of course, display all the varieties and options that IKEA has to offer.”

The North America People’s Choice Award and the North America Judge’s Award went to Creative Agency Bridge Worldwide and Media Agency Starcom for the Pringles Can Hands campaign. This campaign ran in multiple markets worldwide. The campaign is a brilliant example of how creative can drive user interaction. Be sure to click through to the end – it just keeps getting better and better.

R/GA was honored as the winner of the 2009 Cross Channel Effectiveness Award for its Dear Mr. President Campaign, which combined social media with online display advertising.  For a full review of this campaign, see our previous blog entry.

“To celebrate President Obama’s inauguration, R/GA and Pepsi created ‘Dear Mr. President,’ a campaign that was a mash-up of social media and breakthrough ad technology. People across the nation recorded, submitted and shared their own video messages to the President directly from online ad units,” said Michael Lowenstern, group director of digital advertising at R/GA. “We’re excited that the technology, innovation and passion that drove this campaign has been recognized by the Eyeblaster awards.”

Congratulations to all of the winners and nominees!