As ever, the announcement of the 2011 IPA Effectiveness Awards earlier this month was one of the biggest UK ad industry events on the calendar. But the Effectiveness Awards weren't the only prizes handed out by the IPA in November. The inaugural IPA Media Owner Awards were announced in London on Tuesday night, with Google, Specific Media and The Register among the winners.
The awards were decided in two ways: eight prizes were handed out based on submissions from the industry, while a further eight were based on results of the IPA's ongoing online surveys of media owners.
Of the survey-based winners, Specific Media, an online ad specialist whose purchase of MySpace hit the headlines this summer, won the Best Overall Media Owner award, with three in four respondents agreeing the firm delivers the "best overall experience" of all media owners. Specific also took the Best Partnership with agencies award, and Ian Dowds, its UK SVP, won the submissions-based Commercial Director of the Year prize.
Elsewhere, Google and YouTube won Best Innovation, while Telegraph.co.uk, the website of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, won Best Cross Media Exploitation for its effective integration of print and online ad offerings.
Turning to submissions-based awards, The Register took the Most Innovative Online Campaign award for its work with Microsoft. The UK online tech journal, which has a devoted following among IT professionals, promoted the firm's cloud services across a variety of channels, including a mobile app and a webinar series.
You can browse the winners of all 16 awards on the IPA's website.
The 2011 awards season is almost over, with just a few dates for your diaries remaining. The UK DMA Awards will be announced on December 7th, while the IMC European Awards are handed out the following day. Both sets of cases will be available to Warc subscribers immediately after; you'll be able to find them in the Awards section of our website.
And, looking ahead to 2012, two Warc-organized awards are currently open for submissions. The deadline for the Warc Prize for Innovation falls on January 31st, while the Admap Prize closes on February 6th. More information can be found on the dedicated prize pages. And you can also check out a full list of upcoming awards dates on our Global Awards Calendar.
