2010 AOP Awards winners in full

The AOP Awards for 2011 are now open for entry - find out more.

AOP Award Winners 2010

Congratulations to all of the winners at AOP's ninth Digital Publishing Awards... With a high standard and hugely diverse array of entries in 2010, everyone who made it onto the shortlist should be proud.

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Full list of 2010 AOP Awards winners

Digital Publisher - Business

Sponsored by FMG

Winner - Incisive Media

The strategic vision for Incisive Media in the judging year was based on diversifying revenues, optimising data and maximising effectiveness. Over the past year, it has rolled out a new CMS, while integrating and growing online subscriptions revenue, developing and launching new business models, and altogether moving its digital transformation into a higher gear.

Judges’ Comments: “Incisive demonstrated a great knowledge of their audience in the judging period, and have shown positive results by truly grasping digital, and placing it at the core of their business.”

Digital Publisher - Consumer

Sponsored by Ceros

Winner - Guardian News and Media

The strategic vision for guardian.co.uk, and all of its digital products has been to adopt an open approach that weaves the Guardian’s journalism into the fabric of the web. By pursuing an open strategy that has community and social media at its heart, GNM has managed to engage users, extend reach, and find new revenue opportunities.

Judges’ Comments: “Through constant innovation, the Guardian has established itself as a beacon of quality and creativity. It has a true understanding of the web throughout its business and is truly platform agnostic.”

Specialist Digital Publisher

Sponsored by Olswang

Winner - Magicalia

Despite the hostile economic environment in 2009, Magicalia re-established itself as one of the most innovative UK special interest publishers, creating highly engaging and interactive websites, tightly integrated with its own ecommerce platform.

A technology platform upgrade, new product launches and ever more effective content and marketing strategies facilitated rapid growth in unique users and ad revenues.

Judges’ Comments: “Did a great job of focussing on the fundamentals of successful business. Magicalia showed outstanding growth for a B2C publisher in a tough climate.”

Website - Business

Sponsored by Olswang

Winner - Flightglobal - Reed Business Information

Flightglobal’s focus in the judging year was firmly on bringing together all of its growing range of assets into an accessible multimedia experience, making pioneering use of a new editorial platform to combine everything from traditional news and images, through to video, blogs and Twitter feeds. Flightglobal has been at the heart of pioneering new media innovation within the aviation industry and within RBI as a whole.

Judges’ Comments: “FlightGlobal has shown impressive results across all its KPIs in 2009, in what has been a tough year for its audience. The site uses the full spectrum of digital tools, with a special focus on engagement and effective use of social media in a B2B environment.”

Website - Consumer

Sponsored by Demand Media

Winner - NME.COM - IPC Media

Building on a solid foundation of old-fashioned, quality journalism - round the clock reporting and expert opinion pieces - NME.COM continues to be the first port of call for music fans.

While a performance-boosting redesign for the site in the judging year focussed on increasing usability and a cleaner, more intuitive and inviting interface, an effective 'daily videos' box was added, as well as partnerships with a range of highly relevant partner sites.

Judges Comments: “In a difficult year, it has demonstrated exceptional growth, great results and a high degree of innovation.”

Launch

Sponsored by The Rubicon Project

Winner - Guardian Open Platform - Guardian News & Media

Open Platform lets web developers use Guardian content to build new services and products. The larger vision for the project is to weave the Guardian into the fabric of the web, embedding the brand into the experiences people have across digital platforms, wherever they may be.

It has already served as a deal accelerator across the Guardian, enabling ad revenue share deals and content licensing agreements that simply wouldn't have happened before.

Judges’ comments: “GNM’s Open Platform is advanced web thinking in its purest form, achieved through collaboration and creativity. It gives the Guardian brand true global significance.”

Editorial Team - Business

Sponsored by Brand Republic

Winner - Property Week - UBM

The propertyweek.com team’s mission in the judging year was twofold: to transform the site’s brand, look and content focus, and to establish it as the leading community site for property professionals. By overhauling the look and feel of the site, they radically changed the behaviour of its audience, from consumers of content to an engaged and interactive community.

Judges’ Comments: “Investment in editorial and analysis alongside R&D set off their creativity. They demonstrated an appetite for experimentation in a difficult year.”

Editorial Team - Consumer

Sponsored by Brand Republic

Winner - Telegraph - Telegraph Media Group

Telegraph.co.uk celebrated its 15th birthday last year with the biggest story in TMG’s 155-year-old history. Using the combined weight of its website and newspapers to achieve maximum impact, vindicating TMG’s integrated newsroom strategy.

The online treatment reflected an innovative approach to data that extracted sensational revelations from more than 1.5 million documents. The reporting team built a database giving open, easily searchable access to a formidable level of detail about the expenses claims. These new tools and techniques show the extent to which a news scoop can be amplified to a broader audience, quickly and efficiently, and engage that audience at a much deeper level.

Judges’ Comments: “The Telegraph’s editorial team has had a huge impact on its business and the wider world in the judging year.”

Research & Insights Project

Sponsored by Madgex

Winner - GNM Word of Mouth Research - Guardian News & Media

Word of mouth is now regarded not only as a motivation to try a brand but also a measure of advertising impact, and has become an advertising discipline in its own right – with the objective being to create conversations about brands. But how do you identify those most likely to talk about your brands and to influence others?

This research has enabled GNM to underpin the value of its audience to advertisers, demonstrating that they are more connected and influential than the average - an audience of key interest to advertisers. In an increasingly commoditised market, the ability to differentiate GNM’s audience other than on the basis of numbers cannot be overstated.

Judges’ Comments: “A bold, wide-ranging and innovative effort to tackle a complex subject.”

Digital Advertising Sales Team

Sponsored by Solbright

Winner - Future Publishing

Future prides itself on its client relationships and in the past year has leveraged these harder than ever to support its digital platforms. In one of many examples of creating new business strands to engage with companies and protecting revenues, Future has drastically reduced the pressure on its digital-only sales team by giving print sales teams the autonomy to drive forward digital ideas on their brands. This has required a huge training effort across the company, a commitment to exemplary delivery and a very strong ad operations team.

Judges’ Comments: “Future showed a flexible and innovative approach to using its diverse range of titles to create well-monetised online properties.”

Innovation

Sponsored by Deloitte

Winner - The Guardian iPhone app - Guardian News & Media

Following the visual language of both newspaper and website, the Guardian iPhone app was designed to appeal to a mobile audience seeking a new, even more intuitive user experience. It has exceeded sales targets, was the first 'serious content app' to deliver a #1 spot in the AppStore and is bringing its highly engaged users ever-closer to GNM's content.

Judges’ Comments: “Broke the mould of how content to mobile can be monetised.”

Cross-Media Project

Sponsored by Reality

Winner - BBC Headroom - BBC

A wide-reaching, ambitious campaign to make mental health awareness accessible to all, Headroom covered TV, radio, print and online, as well as dedicated festival tents and grassroots projects at libraries and universities, all to great effect. A consistent look and feel was central to the campaign, with an energetic, positive and bold illustrative style working effortlessly cross-media.

Judges’ Comments: “Incorporated a highly creative, effective use of a huge number of channels. BBC Headroom showed real evidence of success in engaging a varied, hard to reach audience.”

Commercial Partnership

Sponsored by Admeld

Winner - Global with XBOX360: Lips - Global Radio

Delivering a massive response to the brief of promoting XBOX360’s karaoke game Lips, Global produced on-air reads, trails and advertorials getting listeners to sing at special audition booths around the UK across six weeks. Global's sites then featured all the performances, encouraged video sharing and remixing, then remaking Lily Allen’s song THE FEAR with the videos, and creating an innovative TV ad which graced The XFactor final on ITV1.

Judges’ Comments: “Superb execution of a user-generated strategy, utilising cross-media platforms to create a highly engaging viral campaign with extremely high quality outputs. This innovative campaign really hit the strategic objectives, and delivered fantastic results for the partnership.”

Use of Video

Sponsored by Ooyala

Winner - guardian.co.uk - Guardian News & Media

The Guardian has shown innovation and creativity in both the form and content of its video output in the judging year. A small dedicated team produce the core video, while photographers and reporters are also trained to shoot video, which has meant that video output is not a mere copy of the broadcasters' but something aesthetically unique, combining economy and creativity.

The Guardian has also involved a community of amateur film-makers in its video output. The most notable example of this: the footage gathered of police tactics at the G20 protest in the City of London, which revealed that Ian Tomlinson died after an assault by a police officer.

Judges’ Comments: “The breadth and quality of coverage, original and innovative productions, and the clever use of third party and audience-generated content was outstanding.”

Use of Mobile

Sponsored by ADTECH

Winner - Autotrader.mobi - Trader Media & Sponge

The mobilisation of Auto Trader followed emerging consumer demands for ‘right here, right now’ brand interaction. At the point of purchase, autotrader.mobi enables consumers to compare their chosen car with the market, check the price against the latest actual sales data, and access a full history of their vehicle as well as read independent reviews and buying advice.

Judges Comments: “The monetisation is a simple and elegant extension of the web model, and one that is clearly a success.”

Ad Technology Platform

Sponsored by UKOM

Winner - Maxifier – Magenta Technology & 24/7 Real Media

Maxifier optimises publishers’ premium and tier 2 inventory, covering all campaigns sold on a CPM, CPC and CPA basis, and is unique in combining human expertise with the power of computational algorithms to provide new levels of optimisation for live campaigns. Features include simulating the behaviour of a publisher’s entire inventory and forecasting each campaign’s performance, then evaluating how campaign parameter change will impact each campaign and entire network performance.

Judges Comments: “An innovative new product bringing standout results, and providing media owners with a high level of clarity and precise executions.”

Digital Editorial Individual

Sponsored by CLA

Winner - Matthew Weaver - Guardian News & Media

Matthew Weaver became one of the first news reporters to use live blogging to cover international and domestic news in 2007. His lightly authored approach to collating many sources from social media, through rival media to multimedia brings new richness to subjects from weather to global affairs.

As an on-the-ground reporter he has driven innovation through his enthusiastic adoption of new tools such as Audioboo and Twitter to enhance his journalism. Best of all, he is a generous teacher who shares his skill and collaborates with his colleagues.

Judges Comments: “Matthew is a 21st Century journalist using all the digital assets at his disposal to tell great stories.”
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