CHANNEL & CAMPAIGN AWARDS
Best Affiliate Program Optimization
Judges will seek to reward outstanding management of a brand’s affiliate program that has leveraged data-driven insights or creative strategies to optimise and significantly enhance the affiliate programme’s growth, profitability, or efficiency.
Best Brand Awareness Campaign
For this category judges are looking to reward campaigns which have successfully utilized partner, performance or creator marketing to drive awareness and help consumers engage with a brand
Best Content Partnership
This category seeks to reward a content campaign (editorial, mass media, affiliate, short or long form video, content commerce or creator based) that’s funded by a brand whether it’s based on performance or for a fixed or hybrid fee. The content should drive desired actions or hit KPIs as determined by the client.
The content partnership could help guide consumers along the purchasing funnel, or via commerce content or social commerce to drive sales or leads for a brand.
Best Cross-Channel Strategy
This award recognizes a standout strategy where multiple teams and channels collaborated to deliver exceptional results for a brand. Judges will be looking for examples of how various team – such as affiliate marketing, influencer, performance media, and PR worked together seamlessly to achieve significant growth or success on a specific initiative. The winning campaign should showcase the power of cross-channel teamwork in driving measurable outcomes.
Best Full Funnel Strategy
Rakuten Advertising delivers performance-driven, brand-driven, and people-driven ad solutions that help the world’s top brands connect with unique, highly engaged audiences – from first impression to final sale. Backed by industry-leading technology, global media properties, and the largest, high-quality partner network, Rakuten Advertising taps into decades of data and experience to develop the strategies and ad experiences that will drive engagement, sales, loyalty, and beyond. A leader in the industry since its beginnings, Rakuten Advertising is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc. (4755: TOKYO), one of the world’s leading internet service companies. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices throughout EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and North America. Learn more at RakutenAdvertising.com.
Partnership marketing can drive influence and conversions at all stages of the purchasing funnel. Judges will be seeking a standout campaign or strategy that has fueled growth for a brand by adopting a full funnel approach to their partnership marketing strategy.
Best Influencer Marketing Partnership
Two-thirds of digital ad spend currently flows to the three big tech platforms – Google, Meta and Amazon. But their auction-based ad models favor their own bottom line and inflate costs at a time when every single marketing dollar counts. Awin’s affiliate marketing solutions provide the alternative to big tech and help you take back control of your ad spend. Using our partnerships platforms, you can unlock unlimited marketing opportunities that reach consumers everywhere. Choose which affiliate partners best match your marketing objectives. Control your costs by defining how you pay these partners. And customize your affiliate marketing program using Awin’s tech to mirror your unique goals, whatever they may be.
This award honors the most successful influencer marketing partnership that drove meaningful results for a brand. Judges will look for campaigns where brands and influencers collaborated seamlessly to create authentic, engaging content that resonated with the target audience. The winning entry should demonstrate how the partnership effectively met key performance indicators (KPIs), whether through increased brand awareness, engagement, or sales, while showcasing the unique value of influencer marketing in achieving the brand’s goals.
Best Performance PR Campaign
This category celebrates an expertly executed digital PR campaign that has successfully boosted brand awareness, enhanced media share of voice, improved brand reputation, and ultimately driven sales. Judges will be looking for a well-rounded strategy that delivers measurable impact and achieves key performance outcomes.
Best Performance-Based Partnership
For this award, judges are seeking the best examples of partnerships that prioritize return on investment (ROI) and demonstrate measurable outcomes. These partnerships could involve performance media, influencer collaborations, or traditional cost per action (CPA) models.
Best Use of a Small Budget
This award celebrates the most effective strategy or campaign executed on a limited budget (Under $25k for the campaign) – Judges will be looking for innovative strategies that demonstrate how creativity, resourcefulness, and smart planning delivered exceptional results despite financial constraints.
Best Use of Data and Insights
For this award, entrants should highlight how the use of data and insights has driven success, which could be defined as new customer acquisition, retention, increasing ROI, market voice, programme or partnership strategy optimization, engagement or anything else fitting in-line with brand objectives.
AGENCY & TEAM AWARDS
Best Affiliate & Partner Marketing Agency - Boutique
This award honors an outstanding agency that consistently delivers exceptional results for its clients within the affiliate and partner marketing industry. A boutique agency is defined as one with less than 20 full-time employees.
Judging criteria seeks to uncover:
- Company growth and profitability
- Client wins and retention
- Company culture and employee development
- Smart execution (delivering exceptional results for clients)
- Team achievements during the period
Best Affiliate & Partner Marketing Agency - Large
Partnerize is the leader in partnership automation. The Partnerize platform is the only of its kind to deliver a fully integrated, comprehensive suite of discovery, recruitment, optimization, payment, brand safety and fraud prevention capabilities for marketers seeking a high transparency, scalable subsidy to alleviate pressure on their unit economics as a result of over dependence on primary sales and marketing channels. Supported by unrivaled service including the category’s only in-housing support program, with Partnerize, you’re in control of the entire partnership marketing lifecycle—all on a single platform. Partnerize has a global footprint, retaining offices in Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. For more information on how Partnerize helps turn your partnerships into a profit center, please visit https://partnerize.com/en.
This award honors an outstanding agency that consistently delivers exceptional results for its clients within the affiliate and partner marketing industry. A large agency is defined as one with more than 20 full-time employees.
Judging criteria seeks to uncover:
- Company growth and profitability
- Client wins and retention
- Company culture and employee development
- Smart execution (delivering exceptional results for clients)
- Team achievements during the period
Best Brand and Agency Partnership NEW

Founded in Santa Barbara, California in 1998, CJ (formerly Commission Junction), leads the industry as the most established name in global performance marketing, specializing in affiliate marketing technology. We’re the platform of choice for driving profitable growth for over 3,800 global brands around the world across all verticals. Our technology powers a partnership ecosystem where over 167K publishers and brands engage billions of consumers worldwide.
As part of Publicis Groupe, we leverage unparalleled data, technology, and strategic expertise to bring a truly customer-centric approach to performance marketing.
This award celebrates outstanding collaboration between a brand and agency that exemplifies seamless synergy, creativity, and impactful results. Judges will evaluate how the partnership effectively integrated strategy, innovation, and flawless execution to deliver measurable success and drive growth.
Best Partnerships Team
This category aims to recognise a superb team within a company who collaborate effectively to drive exceptional outcomes for their company, partners and clients. This could be the publisher support, agency development, client-side or creator management team amongst others
Best Publisher and Agency Partnership NEW
Judges are looking for a strategic partnership or collaboration between a publisher and agency that has delivered outstanding results for an individual or multiple brands.
Eligible entries may highlight a single campaign or a series of campaigns that showcase the strength of the publisher-agency relationship in achieving positive outcomes.
Industry Legend (Nominated) NEW
This award is your chance to nominate someone from the industry with over 15 years of experience.
The ‘Industry Legend’ honors an individual who has made significant contributions to the industry. Criteria should include industry impact, leadership, innovation, and fostering collaboration. The award celebrates long-term success, transformative contributions, and influence in advancing industry growth.
The amount of nominations a person receives doesn’t affect the result. The responsibility for deciding the winner rests solely with the judges – regardless of how many times they have been submitted.
Partnership of the Year
The judges will recognize an exceptional partnership that excels in every aspect, strategically leveraging the full potential of affiliate, performance, and/or influencer marketing.
Together - We Solved That!
Judges are looking for an example of a real world challenge that has been solved for a client (with a great outcome) using both technology and the power of great teams.
TECHNOLOGY AWARDS
Best Platform for Partnership Success INDUSTRY VOTED
The winner of this award will be able to successfully demonstrate how their platform or SaaS empowers brands (or their agencies) to work successfully with publishers and/or creators. A 5 minute video will be required as part of the submission.
Most Innovative Technology
This category recognizes a standout, innovative technology within the performance or creator industry that helps brands, creators or publishers meet their goals
VERTICAL & INDUSTRY AWARDS
Best Amazon Campaign NEW
This award seeks to celebrate an effective campaign or partnership that drove sales to an advertisers Amazon storefront.
Best Health & Beauty Partnership
Judges will be seeking to reward a best in-class partnership or campaign within the health & beauty vertical. Taking a holistic approach, entries should demonstrate best in-class results along with planning and execution that raises the bar to make your partnership stand out from the crowd
Best Retail Partnership

Judges will be seeking to reward a best in-class partnership or campaign within the retail/e-commerce vertical. Taking a holistic approach, entries should demonstrate best in-class results along with planning and execution that raises the bar to make your partnership stand out from the crowd.
Best Technology & Telecoms Partnership
Judges will be seeking to reward a best in-class partnership or campaign within the technology & telecoms vertical. Taking a holistic approach, entries should demonstrate best in-class results along with planning and execution that raises the bar to make your partnership stand out from the crowd.
Best Travel & Hospitality Partnership
Judges will be seeking to reward a best in-class partnership or campaign within the travel, leisure and hospitality vertical. Taking a holistic approach, entries should demonstrate best in-class results along with planning and execution that raises the bar to make your partnership stand out from the crowd.