CJ Excellence Awards

Important dates

• Entry Period Opens: Thursday, June 4, 2026
• Entry Period Closes: Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM (PT)
• CJ Excellence Awards dinner and ceremony: September 16, 2026

Steps to submit

1. Click here to navigate to our entry portal
2. Register or log in (third-party verification required)
3. Complete your submission (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 

How to enter:

Complete the following questions for each category entered: 

1. Summary:  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:  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

• All submissions must reference activity that occurred only between June 1, 2025 - May 31, 2026. 
• 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 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 collecting your evidence and building your framework early so you can submit a couple days before the deadline
• Think storytelling rather than data dumps.  Connect your results to your objectives and the actions you took to create a flowing narrative
• Define your acronyms first. What's obvious to you might not be to someone else, even in our industry  
• Our external judging panel will evaluate everything: effort, creativity, results, and overall story. Score weighting varies by category, so tailor your entry accordingly
• Entries will be judged individually by each of our external judges without discussion or collaboration. Once scores from each judge have been collected, a winner will be selected
• Where warranted, we’ll also give out Highly Commended awards

⭐️ Best creator strategy

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

⭐️ 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

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

New! Individual recognition

⭐️ Commerce trailblazers

New for 2026, this award recognizes the CJ advertisers, agencies, publishers and creators who are shaping the future of affiliate and commerce. Recipients will be selected by our judges, honoring our most innovative clients, whose influence, vision, and partnerships are moving the world of connected commerce forward.

We will be accepting nominations for this award on the same entry platform using a simple form. Nominate yourself or a colleague.