January 14, 2021
The first out-of-home awards determined by data and not the size of a budget, hunch or who you know.
2020 has been quite simply a slap-in-the-face of a year for everyone, including the out-of-home advertising world. To make things at least slightly better, we think now more than ever our customers need to be recognized for their hard work.
For that reason, we’re excited to announce the very first Vertical Impression Awards. A fun way to recognize the most engaging campaigns that ran on the Vertical Impression network.
That’s nice and all, but why would a marketer even want to strive for this recognition?
The problem we see with many of the out-of-home awards is that they tend to be very subjective. There’s nothing wrong with that but we all know how polarizing figure skating judging can be...we simply want to be different.
D.R.E.A.M - Data Rules Everything Around Me, that’s one of our core values here at Vertical Impression. Data, insights and technology are what separates us from the traditional out-of-home advertising and what makes our clients successful (and love us).
For that reason, the two main Vertical Impression Awards are determined by data only. Specifically by our ad attention score - the north star that determines the winners. In doing so we follow strict consumer data privacy principles. We’re the first Canadian digital out-of-home provider to be awarded Privacy by Design certification.
A slick badge for your website or media kit, a cool plaque to dazzle your clients and the ultimate bragging rights that will make the winners feel like a million bucks...especially knowing that nobody picked favourites.
Just like the shiny object we’re drawn to, the winner of this category has managed to attract the most eyeballs to their campaign. The winner was determined by having the highest ad-attention score for a qualified campaign on our network.
Winner: DSA Media, Unflushables for Metro Vancouver (ad attention 233% over the baseline). Preview.
Runner-up: Initiative, Family Feud for CBC (ad attention 210% over the baseline). Preview.
We all turn into different versions of ourselves on the weekends. A nurse becomes a race car driver, an accountant turns into a mountaineer. Likewise, people respond to different messages on the weekend throughout our network. The winner of this category recorded the highest ad-attention score for their campaign over the weekends.
Winner: Initiative, Apple Airpods campaign for RBC (ad attention 177% over the baseline). Preview.
Runner-up: Media Experts, Appliance Event for Best Buy (ad attention 169% over the baseline). Preview.
Hey, we do realize that not everything can be measured. Creativity, a good joke, a good deed can come in all forms and sizes. This is our not-so data-driven category. We asked the Vertical Impression team to nominate and vote on campaigns that used our audience targeting capability in the most creative way. See the results of our voting here. See the results of our voting here.
Winner: Publicis/Spark Foundry, Starbucks 2020 campaign for Starbucks. Preview.
Runner-up: Vessi, Black Friday 2020 campaign. Preview.
The winning Starbucks campaign used geo targeting to connect with residential tower audience within an 1km radius of a Starbucks location. Additionally, they served different creatives during the day to provide an irresistible offer exactly when people need it - breakfast in the AM, a pick-me-up treat in the PM. The Canadian footwear brand Vessi creatively used geo and weather targeting to hyper-personalize their ads for their waterproof shoes to people across Vancouver and GTA. These are amazing examples of what advertisers can do on our elevator advertising network..
Congratulations to all the winners! We're excited to bring back The Vertical Impression Awards in 2021. Bigger and bolder. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss any other fun events in the future.
Just like any other industry and advertising medium, we weren’t spared from the impact of COVID 19. For that reason, we decided to limit the number of campaigns that qualified to after our traffic stabilized to provide impartial results. We included all campaigns that ran on our network for at least a week between September 1 and November 30, 2020. Our plan for 2021 is to include all campaigns that ran in the calendar year. The campaign had to be running in multiple locations. Any property specific campaigns were excluded and individual campaign can only place in and win one category (i.e. The overall winner can’t win any of the other award categories to recognize as many companies as possible).
Ad attention is our proprietary campaign metric. It allows us to see how well each campaign is performing and which audience is responding the most relative to the rest of the campaigns on our network. We developed an algorithm to compute ad attention score from the anonymous campaign data and other important factors such as building location and make-up. In doing so, we follow strict consumer data privacy principles. We’re the first Canadian digital out-of-home provider to be awarded Privacy by Design certification.
