Important Dates

• Entry Period Opens: Thursday, June 5, 2025
• Entry Period Closes: Friday, July 25, 2025 at 5:00 PM (PT)
• CJ Excellence Awards Dinner and Ceremony: September 10, 2025

Entering Is Easy

1. Click here to navigate to our entry portal.
2. Register or log in (third-party verification required)
3. Complete your submission (Remember–you'll need written consent if submitting for a client or including other company names) 
4. Upload your entry and vector logo files (.eps or .ai) for all companies mentioned 

Awards Categories 

Best Creator Strategy
Showcase how you cracked the content code. Whether you launched a game-changing creator strategy or partnered with the CJ Influence Team for breakthrough results, we want the details. This award celebrates the strategic minds who've turned content and creators into serious revenue drivers. 

Best Channel Expansion & Activation Strategy 

Breaking out of your comfort zone paid off. This category celebrates strategy that unlocked new performance channels—from influencer and paid media to retail media—all while reactivating high-potential partners you'd been sleeping on. Show us how strategic expansion delivered measurable growth across emerging and long-tail segments to be in with a shot.

Best Global Growth Strategy
Taking your performance strategy worldwide? We're here for it. This award celebrates programs that scaled internationally, hit the ground running in new markets, or delivered region-specific growth using CJ's global infrastructure. Show us how you made the world your marketplace. 

Best Use of CJ Technology or Solutions 

Smart marketers don't just use tools—they master them. This award spotlights campaigns that harnessed CJ's platform capabilities to drive real innovation and performance. Whether you maximized Marketplaces, CLO, CJ Leads, Integrations, Pub Tag, APIs, or product feeds—show us how technology enabled your scale, efficiency, and results. 

Most Innovative Collaboration Award

Some partnerships transcend the ordinary. This award celebrates strategic collaborations that go beyond traditional affiliate models. Whether brand-to-brand, brand-agency, or cross-channel publisher collabs, show us the partnerships that delivered breakthrough results by thinking outside the box. 

YOY Growth Awards
These awards recognize overall year-over-year growth. No submission required—we're tracking the numbers:

• Advertiser of the Year - SME
• Advertiser of the Year - Large Enterprise
• Publisher of the Year
• Agency of the Year

How To Enter:

Complete the following questions for each category entered: 

1. Summary/Sound Bite: Tell us why you deserve to win. In 2-3 sentences. This is what we'll read when announcing your win onstage. (We might make minor edits to fit our stage time.) 
   
2. Clear Objectives: Show us your plan (we love to see evidence of well-thought-out objectives and SMART logic strategy - specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound). Only include objectives you'll reference later so we can follow your thread. 
3. Execution: Tell us how you made it happen. Walk us through team actions, technologies used, challenges overcome and anything you think we need to know, including any innovative or unique approaches. Make sure you provide context and avoid any jargon our judges might not understand. 
4. Results: Hit us with the numbers that matter. What impact did your solution have? Support your answer with data and metrics, tie it back to your objectives, and, where possible, provide a benchmark for your industry to make your results shine. 

Entry Tips & Need-to-Know Info

• All submissions must reference activity that occurred only between June 1, 2024 - May 31, 2025. No ancient history, please—we want your fresh wins.
• Make sure you're targeting the right info for each category description.  
• Word limits: 350 per section, except for the summary which gets 150 words max. Keep it clear, ditch the buzzwords, and give context for judges who might not know your specific business inside and out.  
• For objectives and results sections, bullet points work great for those key data points—your word count (and the judges) will thank you.
• All entries must be submitted through our awards platform.
• Start early so you can submit a couple days before the deadline. Last-minute panic doesn't make for award-winning entries. Collect your evidence and build your framework now. 
• Think storytelling, not just data dumps. Connect your results to your objectives and the actions you took. Make it flow like a compelling narrative. 
• Define your acronyms first! What's obvious to you might not be to someone else, even in our industry. 
• Our judge panel will evaluate everything: effort, creativity, results, and overall story. Score weighting varies by category, so tailor accordingly. 
• Here's how judging works: Scores get collected, reviewed, and discussed by judging groups (our marketing team oversees the process). After careful deliberation, we'll pick a winner for each category, plus give out any Highly Commended awards if warranted.