WebAward Winners Announced

The Web Marketing Association announced today the winners of its tenth annual WebAward Competition for outstanding web site development. More than 2,300 web sites from 35 countries were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year's WebAward competition.

Entries were judged on top web site design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology.

“The World Wide Web continues to evolve in terms of Web site development and the expectations of visitors to sites,” said William Rice, President of the Web Marketing Association. “The Web sites today are more integrated than event and have multimedia tools embedded into the site rather than as links. The WebAward Once again the WebAward winning Websites have set the standard for all Web development. This accomplishment serves as invaluable marketing opportunity for both the winning website and company and serves as a benchmark for all Websites within the industry.”

The 2005 Best of Show WebAward is presented to New York-based Big Spaceship (www.bigspaceship.com), for its outstanding work on the "TBS: Department of Humor Analysis" web site at www.tbshumorstudy.com. The web site was also won for Best TV WebAward. TBS's Dept. of Humor Analysis works hard to put the -very- in front of -funny. To help TBS steer clear of common pitfalls in this cut-throat, dog-eat-dog, rabbit-outwit-duck, duck-shoot-pig, anvil-smush-coyote, Chico-trip-Zeppo field of funny business, Big Spaceship joined forces Mother Interactive to turn their very silly questionnaire into an addictive, fully interactive web site.

R/GA (www.rga.com) was named Top Agency at the 2006 WebAward Competition, taking home 19 WebAwards. The Top Agency Award recognizes the consistently outstanding development pursued by interactive firms when creating top website designs. R/GA has also won more WebAwards than any other organization during the past decade, although this is their first Top Agency Award. R/GA, headquartered in New York, won 12 Outstanding and 7 Standard of Excellence WebAwards.

Agencies or companies winning six or more WebAwards in 2006 include the following:

Agency - # of Website awards in 2006

R/GA - 19
Zugara - 18
E-Site Marketing - 13
Arnold Worldwide -12
Bridge Worldwide - 12
Refinery, Inc. - 12
BrowserMedia - 11
CondeNet - 11
Aristotle - 10
Avenue A / Razorfish - 9
Bbdigital (Blattner Brunner) -9
Vision Internet Providers - 9
Critical Mass - 8
Open World Ltd. - 8
Organic - 8
2Advanced Studio - 7
American Academy of Dermatology - 7
Biggs-Gilmore - 6
Brulant - 6
Buena Vista Pictures Marketing - 6
Hanson Inc. - 6
Hubbard One - 6
imc2 - 6
JWT Specialized Communications - 6
MagiClick - 6<
Mullen - 6
Ogilvy One - 6
Racepoint Group - 6
TM Interactice - 6
VML Inc - 6
WhippleHill Communications - 6

The WebAwards’ competition was judged by a team of independent Internet professionals representing a variety of relevant disciplines of Web site development. Judges included members of the media, advertising executives, web site designers, creative directors, corporate marketing executives, content providers and webmasters.

The WebAward competition format allows web sites to compete head to head with other web sites within their industry to win the Best of Industry awards.

Entries also compete against a standard of excellence to win Outstanding Web site and Standard of Excellence WebAwards. Each web site is judged on seven different criteria and earns a score between 0 and 70 points. The highest score in a given category wins Best of Industry for that category. If the remaining entries received a score of 60 or greater, they receive the Outstanding Web site award. Entries that scored between 50 and 59.9 receive the Standard of Excellence.

A complete list of the winning sites can be found at the WebAward Web site at www.webaward.org

The 2006 WebAward Competition sponsors include:

BURST! Media (www.burstmedia.com)
Misukanis & Odden (www.misukanisodden.com)
SimpleFeed (www.simplefeed.com)
Register.com (www.register.com)
NewsUSA (www.newsusa.com)
AdTools Inc(www.adtoolsinc.com)
Small Army (www.smallarmy.net)
Perseus Development Corp (www.perseus.com)
Top Rank (www.toprankmarketing.com)
Creative Chocolate Printing Company (www.CreativeChocolatePrinting.com)
PRWeb (www.prweb.com)

Media Sponsors include:
Website Services Magazine (www.websiteservices.com)
AdRants (www.adrants.com)
MarketingVox (www.marketingvox.com)
MediaPost (www.mediapost.com)
eComXpo (www.ecomxpo.com)
Ad:Tech (www.ad-tech.com)
Macworld (www.macworldexpo.com).

The Web Marketing Association thanks all of its sponsors for helping to make this annual competition possible.
About the Web Marketing Association

The Web Marketing Association is working to create a high standard of excellence for Web site development and marketing on the Internet. Staffed by volunteers, it is made up of Internet marketing, advertising, PR and design professionals who share an interest in improving the quality of Website development and marketing on the Internet. Since 1997, the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAward Competition has been helping interactive professionals promote themselves, their companies, and their best work to the outside world. Now in its ninth year, the WebAward Competition has become the premier award event for Web developers and marketers worldwide.