As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Ozone’s launch, we’ve asked our team for their thoughts and opinions on the different things that have made for memorable moments across the years. Today’s focus is on our most significant award wins, as judged by our team. We are very humbled by the recognition our business has received over the years from the industry, and we know that none of that would be possible without the support and lean-in of all of our advertiser, agency and publisher partners.

Industry awards often prompt a lot of discussion about their value, but their importance to our team is best summed up by this quote from Julian, our client services manager, “I value every nomination and award win as a massive reason as to why Ozone is a fantastic company to work for and a place where I can truly progress”.

Thanks Julian, now it’s time to get on with our countdown…

5. Best Scale Up Business at The Marketing Society Awards

Nothing quite beats receiving an award that is judged by the best of the best; in this case it was a group of leading CMOs – the perfect customer profile for Ozone – who honoured us with this accolade. Not only was it the longest entry we’ve ever had to write (coming in at 3,500 words), but as Bryan our marketing director explains, “was a paper that genuinely encompassed every single part of our business and not just a single function, team or technology”.

4. Ad Operations Team of the Year at the Digiday Media Awards Europe

Without sounding like a cliché, it is really ‘one team, one dream’ at Ozone. However, every now and again we get the opportunity to recognise the hard work and efforts of an individual team within the business. As was the case for this award, when our Publisher Operations team were recognised for going the extra mile in delivering greater efficiencies and revenues for our publisher partners – great work! If we’re calling out a team, it would be remiss of us not to give a shout out to those individuals who have been individually recognised over the years, including Bill and Dipti who were inducted into The Media Leader’s Future 100 club, Luke who was named as a ‘Face to Watch’ by Campaign and of course, our CEO Damon who was earlier this year named Tech Leader of the Year at The Media Leader awards.

3. Best Contextual Campaign at the Newsworks Awards

While this wasn’t an award scribed by us – big up the7stars team for that work – it’s one that demonstrates the collaborative impact of working together. As Carly, our client services executive said, “this was a great example of Ozone working closely with both the the7stars and TSB teams to deliver great results. I truly believe that great communication and a trusted relationship between all parties was key to the success of this campaign.” Not only was this a great joint entry, but all three partners got to celebrate the win together at the rather swanky NoMad Hotel!

2. All of our platform and technology wins

Okay, we’ve slightly cheated here, but given the technology-focus of our business it was hard to choose just one. So here we’ve bundled Tech Company of the Year from The Media Leader, with Best Publisher Platform from Digiday and Best Digital Publishing Innovation from the AOP. As our CEO Damon explains, “what some people don’t realise is that around half of Ozone is made up of product, engineering and data teams who provide the backbone to the success of our business”. This is a sentiment echoed by Tom in our agency sales team who said, “it’s nice to remind our clients there’s a lot more to Ozone than the people they deal with day to day”. On a slightly different note, Kirsty,our senior business programmes manager, highlighted the win for Ozone Smart Bidstream at the AOP Digital Publishing Awards saying, “it’s great to see the innovation and hard work put into developing differentiated products that really work for our customers being recognised”. Hear, hear!

1. The Media Week double

Undoubtedly one of the most memorable Ozone moments has to be that night in October 2022, when we did the double at Campaign’s Media Week Awards, picking up accolades for both Media Brand and Sales Team of the Year. As Bill, our regional sales lead said, “they are both awards that are a result of every single Ozoner’s hard work”, while Becca, our senior agency sales partner, said, “what a win, still SO proud”. One of the reasons why this night resonated so much with our team (Tom, Jacque, Dipti and Craig also called it out) is because every Ozoner was on the journey with us. As part of the Sales Team of the Year process, we had to present for 30 minutes to ten agency CEOs who visited our office and heard our entry played out in front of the entire team. Everyone was vested, as Alex, our insight and communications manager, said, “I wasn’t able to make the actual event, but I kept checking WhatsApp and Twitter throughout the evening to see if we won – it was such a thrill when the wins were announced”. We’re pretty sure this highlight will live with many of the Ozone team for years to come.

And just to wrap things up, a special shout out to Dougie, our agency sales partner, who highlighted his MVP award at Ozone’s 2022 Sports Day. While he said he was telling us ‘selfishly’, the competitive spirit at these inter-company events means that this was a hard won honour! Great work Dougie!