Looking back: The 2006 Yahoo! Searchlight Award Show

On February 22, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing unveiled the Yahoo! Searchlight Award for creativity and innovation in search at our first annual Yahoo! Searchlight Award Show, "Search: Thinking Outside the Funnel." Attendees from various New York advertising agencies joined us as we celebrated creative uses of search in the media mix.

Four agencies presented search advertising campaigns:

• Agency.com presented Miller "Beer Run"
• Avenue A Razorfish Search presented Chase "Love the Double"
• GM Planworks presented GM "Fastlane Blog"
• RPA Interactive presented "Honda Element: A Different Animal."

A panel of industry experts provided feedback and lively commentary on the merits of these campaigns. Our panelists included Jon Fine of BusinessWeek, Brian Morrissey of Adweek and Greg Sterling of The Kelsey Group.

After that, the audience voted to decide which agency would take home the custom Yahoo! Searchlight.

As Rebecca Lieb wrote in the ClickZ NewsBlog, "RPA's campaign for the Honda Element was the hands down winner. The creative features the car having droll little conversations with a variety of animals. So what search terms did RPA buy? Words like 'element' + 'possum.' Unlikely? It worked. Search traffic to the brand's game site hit the target demo perfectly."

So who will win the coveted Yahoo! Searchlight Award for 2007? Only time, talent and the voting audience will tell.