Creative Secrets from Our 2024 IAC Award Winners

At Infillion, we’re passionate about developing cutting-edge technology solutions that streamline and personalize the customer journey for our clients and agency partners. 

That’s why we are thrilled to announce that we have been honored with the Top Agency Award for the fourth consecutive year by the 2024 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards.

This prestigious recognition from the Web Marketing Association comes on the heels of a record-setting 27 awards for 14 TrueX campaigns including another Best of Show Award – this time for our work with Amazon and Rufus.  

The IACs are one of the few competitions that honors the tech side of advertising creative, where Infillion’s TrueX technology is truly world-class. The TrueX guaranteed attention model provides a better experience for the viewer, reduced ad load for publishers, and 5x the brand impact for advertisers over a standard video spot.

To celebrate our historic IAC wins, join us as we look behind the curtain to discover how our brilliant teams collaborated with our brand and agency partners to create these award-winning bespoke experiences. 

Client Name: Amazon

Agency Name: Rufus 

IAC Wins: Best Shopping Online Ad, Best Technology Online Ad, Best Of Show Online Ad

Amazon made a triumphant return to the winners’ circle after winning multiple industry awards with Infillion for a first-to-market voice-activated Amazon Alexa ad. Honored by the Webby Awards, OMMA Awards, AdExchanger Awards, and more, that campaign let users try out real Alexa commands in a virtual kitchen, bedroom, and even International Space Station.                                                      

This time, Amazon remained firmly planted on the ground as they worked with Infillion to create a lively holiday gift guide that drove users to Amazon for all of their shopping needs. While on the surface that seems simple enough, our teams put Santa’s elves to shame working around the clock to ensure that the festive messaging remained fresh and relevant to holiday revelers every step of the way – from Black Friday to Christmas Day. With our interactive tech, those creative swaps can be seamless.

Client Name: BASF

Agency Name: VML 

IAC Wins: Best Biotechnology Online Ad, Best B2B Online Ad

BASF came to Infillion with a :15 second spot called “The Shark and The Goldfish” that positions Revytek as the Apex Predator Shark of the fungicide industry, while the competition is nothing more than mere goldfish.

To drive this message home, BASF partnered with Infillion to create an interactive game to complement the video ad. Infillion’s Creative Studio dove into the deep end and created an interactive underwater game for users to play during a 30-second interactive TrueX ad. The custom game let users play as a Tiger Shark and challenged them to catch as many goldfish as possible – demonstrating that there is Revytek fungicide…and then there’s everything else.

Client Name: Charles Schwab

Agency Name: UM 

IAC Wins: Best Financial Services Online Ad, Best Investment Online Ad

Financial consultants at Charles Schwab pride themselves on hard work, doing right by their clients, and offering a good product at a transparent price. To demonstrate this powerful ethos, UM chose to work with Infillion to gift existing and potential customers shorter ad breaks as a thank-you for interacting with one :30 second engagement – underscoring the value exchange in the process.

Because of their past experience with Infillion, the UM creative team came to our Creative Studio with bespoke copy that directly tied the TrueX value exchange to Schwab’s commitment to transparent pricing and clients, Thanks to the clean branding and messaging, plus an active CTA, this ad drove CTR 5x above benchmark, and statistically significant brand lift.

Client Name: Intel

Agency Name: Carat/Dentsu 

IAC Wins: Best Computer: Hardware Online Ad, Best Consumer Goods Online Ad, Best Electronics Online Ad

Intel is no stranger to winning IAC Awards: 2024 marks its second year in a row winning a Best Computer Ad award and it’s easy to see why. In a world of plentiful laptop options for students, Carat/Dentsu and Infillion came together to cut through the noise, building an immersive hotspot experience that allows consumers to explore the range of Intel® Evo™ laptops and find the right fit for them. Hotspot-based ads are eye-catching and click-friendly, and sure enough, this approach garnered results 5x higher than Infillion’s own benchmarks. 

The success of this campaign proves that the attention and engagement guarantee of the Infillion experience gave Intel® Evo™ laptops a leg-up on the competition.

Client Name: Levi’s

Agency: UM

IAC Wins: IAC Best Fashion & Beauty Online Ad, Best Retail Online Ad

150 years in and Levi’s is still celebrating firsts — this year, the brand won its first IAC Award! 

For the 150th anniversary of its classic 501 jeans design, Levi’s had a lot of stories to tell about the impact and the history of the company. Infillion and UM worked together to create a Multiple Video campaign, highlighting three of “The Greatest Stor[ies] Ever Worn.” Thanks to this ad experience, users learned about how 501 jeans are woven into the fabric of our modern world. And despite high control baselines for Levi’s (in other words, everyone knows this classic brand), this campaign still generated statistically significant brand lift in upper and middle funnel measures like awareness.

Client: National Grid

Agency: Mower

IAC Wins: Best Regional Online Ad

National Grid teamed up with Infillion to showcase its expertise in the natural gas and electricity industry across several different regions. 

As they serve a wide area, National Grid wanted to and accurately easily tailor its messaging to users in each place, while receiving metrics on how users reacted when exposed to their creative. That’s an often undersung benefit of interactive ads – the actionable data that a client can get back after a campaign runs. What parts of an ad interested the most consumers? Where in an ad did they spend the most time?

With Infillion’s unique capabilities, National Grid could easily customize messages for each location and track user interactions to tailor their content. Using the Foundation Carousel user flow on CTV, they guided users through their brand benefits, complemented by a CTA in the form of a custom QR code.

Client Name: Northwest Bank

Agency: Mower

IAC Wins: Best Bank Online Ad

Northwest Bank offers banking solutions and services designed to support customers in every step of their financial wellness journey – from first-time account holders to families looking for a loan to buy their dream home — and everyone in between.

To amplify this message, Infillion implemented its popular Foundation Carousel Blueprint to show that as one’s life grows and changes, Northwest Bank is there to help them achieve their financial goals. Blueprints like this one can cut down creative development of an interactive ad by 50%, while creating a truly premium experience. In this ad, each frame of the carousel highlighted a new banking solution or product, all the while creating a buffet of exit points for any life phase. 

Client: Plan B One-Step

Agency: Healix

IAC Wins: Best Medical Online Ad, Best Pharmaceuticals Online Ad

Plan B emergency contraceptive has become a household name, but this interactive campaign helped answer some important questions about it: How does it work? When can I take it? Where can I find it? 

This campaign was particularly notable in that it reconfigured one of Plan B’s own tools to allow users to determine whether the contraceptive would be effective up to abn exact time and day – right within the Infillion interactive canvas. This powerful unit also educated users by informing them of Plan B’s availability online and in-store while providing multiple paths to individual sites to learn more. In other words, the ad served as a hub for self-guided product education without even requiring users to leave their content of choice.

Client: Point Foundation

IAC Wins: Best LGBTQ Online Ad, Best School Online Ad

Did you know about Infillion’s community-building arm, TrueGiving? This year, one TrueGiving campaign won not one, but two IACs: Best LGBTQ Online Ad and Best School Online Ad! TrueGiving worked with the Point Foundation, a scholarship fund that provides financial aid for LGBTQIA+ college-bound students in the United States. This pro bono campaign was aimed at spreading awareness of the obstacles that LGBTQIA+ students often face, and the resources Point provides them with.

The campaign took testimonials from scholarship recipients and shared them alongside stats of what queer students are up against in higher education (compared to non-queer students), aiming to garner donations and help Point enact change by giving LGBTQIA+ students a fighting chance to pursue higher education. Viewers spent nearly double the minimum time spent with this compelling ad.

Client: Porsche Cayenne: 

Agency: PHD 

IAC Awards: Best Automobile Online Ad

Many affluent car buyers shy away from luxury sports cars because of their compact size and storage space. But then there’s the Porsche Cayenne – a roomy sports car built for five passengers. To help users discover the latest Cayenne, Porsche worked with Infillion to put users in the driver’s seat to build their own version of the Cayenne in exchange for a reduced ad load. This unique, first-to-market “car configurator” technology was built in-house at Infillion and, as it was with Porsche, can be deployed across desktop, mobile, and connected TV. 

Client: Rider University 

Agency: Princeton Partners, Atmospheric Digital

IAC Awards: Best Education Online Ad, Best University Online Ad

Rider University has a lot to offer students – affordability-focused, high faculty-to-student ratio, an Engaged Learning pedagogy, D1 sports teams, and more. That’s what it wanted to put front-and-center to prospective students in a new ad campaign. To show it all off, Infillion built a carousel-based ad to walk users through the reasons why it was worth it for them to apply to Rider, including an application fee waiver for visiting the campus, 90+ majors and minors, scholarship and aid opportunities, and Rider’s own Cranberry Investment guarantee. Universities’ offerings are complicated, and an interactive ad like this one allows them to pack far more information into a single ad than traditional video could.

Client: U.S. Navy

Agency: Wavemaker

IAC Awards: Best Employment Online Ad, Best Government Online Ad, Best Military Online Ad

Here’s another example of how interactivity can showcase a complex brand story without overloading viewers, and instead allowing them to choose their own path. While the U.S. Navy may be associated with life at sea, the experience reaches far beyond serving our country from a boat – and that’s the message the Navy wanted to send potential recruits in a fall 2023 ad campaign.

Aiming to highlight how service can lead to careers in STEM, the campaign targeted high school seniors who were returning from summer vacation and starting to think about their next steps in life. The ad allowed users to explore one of four exploratory paths in STEM (there were simply too many naval careers in STEM to include them all!), generating impressive brand lift through the funnel.

Client: Wounded Warrior Project

Agency: Two Tango Collaborative

IAC Awards: Best Advocacy Online Ad, Best Non-Profit Online Ad

The Wounded Warrior Project offers a robust set of services to create stability for returning service members – mental health support, financial assistance, recreation, and social bonding.

To educate users on this incredible project, Infillion created a pathway for veterans and non-veterans – each detailing specific ways the Wounded Warrior Project can help designed to appeal to both veterans as well as their supporters – along with multiple exit points that can lead the user directly to that part of Wounded Warrior Project’s website. The TrueX ad was also the entry point for this campaign, as we then used our NeXt rich display ads to retarget users.

Client: VisitBritain 

Agency: OMD

IAC Awards: Best Leisure Online Ad, Best Travel Online Ad

Infillion’s first-to-market, AI-powered voice recognition ad technology earned industry accolades when Amazon debuted it for its “virtual Alexa” ads in 2018. But VisitBritain put a whole new spin on it with this campaign by turning the ad creative into a language-faking challenge, encouraging the speaker to try pronouncing slang phrases from Wales, Newcastle, and elsewhere throughout Britain. The aim was to show US tourists that different regions of Britain have different, well, everything. (It’s not all Big Ben and corgis.)

The IACs were just the latest award win for this campaign: Last fall, it took home the OMMA Award for Rich Display Media.