IAB HK Spring Dinner & Digital Awards Gala 2023: Celebrate digital brilliance with 350 marketers

As one of the most active advertising and digital marketing associations in Hong Kong, IAB Hong Kong (IAB HK) successfully held its Spring Dinner & Digital Awards Gala 2023 (The Gala) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 13 Mar 2024. This event brought together 350 local digital marketing elites to network, celebrate, and recognize outstanding achievements in the industry.

Kevin Huang, Chairman of IAB Hong Kong, addressed his welcoming speech to mark the opening: "Over the past year, we have seen a healthy recovery in the ad market as brands ramped up their brand-building and marketing efforts again to stay top of mind, gain market share and fuel growth. Tonight, we are here to honor some very talented individuals who have shown outstanding creativity, innovation and achievements with our 2nd annual Digital Awards". This award is the only digital marketing-focused award organized by a non-profit organization, contributing to developing an innovative future for the digital marketing industry. The Gala was first held in the format of a spring dinner and was sponsored by AnyMind Group, EternityX, Google, Hang Seng Bank, HKT, Omnicom Media Group, Publicis Groupe, RFI Asia, RTB House, Uni-China Group and Yahoo.

The judging panel comprised 43 highly recognized industry leaders and senior professionals across the digital marketing industry including brands, agencies, platforms, NGOs, academia, and AdTech (Appendix 1: Judge List of IAB HK Digital Awards 2023). They dedicated almost 550 hours to reviewing over 110 entries and selected the outstanding campaigns based on four key areas: strategy, execution, innovation, and results.

Arthur Chan, Vice Chairman of IABHK, shared that the overall quality of entries was splendid. "The standard of this year's entries is impressively high. I served as a judge last year as well and I would say the submissions from this year surpassed our expectations," said Chan. All the compliments from the judges are testaments to the industry's dedication to excellence and the continuous pursuit of innovative marketing strategies.

The award includes six categories, namely Best Use of Adtech & Programmatic Advertising, Best Branding Campaign, Best Use of Commerce, Best Use of Content Innovation, Best Use of Data & Insights, and Best Use of Martech, comprehensively covering various technological aspects and market trends in digital marketing. Each award has an independent judging panel, evaluating the campaigns' Strategy, Execution, Innovation/Creativity, and Results. Among the gold winners, the campaign with the highest scores and most awards will be crowned the "Best Digital Campaign of the Year".