On the night, 139 winners were announced, including 10 Black Pixels, 15 Gold, 47 Silver and 67 Bronze awards, of which 18 went to Digital Agency of the Year TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris based in Johannesburg.

TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris’ big winners were 'The Unbound Production' for the Joburg Ballet and the 'Blame no More' campaign for Hype Magazine. Joburg Ballet also picked up Gold in the Digital Strategy Campaign, Silver in the Digital Integrated Campaign and Innovative Use of Media, and a Bronze in the Online Video Series and Excellence in Craft Video Production Categories. While the 'Blame no More' campaign took Silver in the Digital Strategy Campaign, Digital Integrated Campaign and Branded Content categories.

You’ve got to be focusing on the now; that’s where your bread and butter is. It’s not either/or. The now is the stuff you need to do today; the stuff your clients pay you for. But if you don’t focus on the next, you won’t be relevant in future. When you live in the-now-and-the-next in a marketplace that’s changing at warp speed, you have to face the now minute-to-minute, while the next is materialising simultaneously. It really is about the-now-and-the-next. - Peter Khoury, CCO, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris

Other special honourees included Best Digital Students, Kyle Gounden and Lesego Molaudi of Vega; Best Digital Youngster, Nosipho Maseko of Joe Public United; Best Digital Marketer, Jessica van der Westhuyzen of OneDayOnly and Best Online Journalist, Thomas Holder of Primedia Broadcasting. Musa Kalenga of House of Brave was recognised as having the Best Individual Contribution to Digital while the Best Contribution to Transformation in the Digital Industry was awarded to Joe Public United. The Pixel for Purpose went to Ogilvy, and ABInBev was announced as the Digital Brand of the Year, and Primedia Broadcasting and 24.com as the Online Publisher of the Year.

Charlene Beukes, GM of News24 and jury chair for the special honours category commented: “The special honour awards or the coveted Black Pixels pay tribute to the pioneers of our digital marketing community, who consistently strive to evolve our industry and produce work that can be showcased on a world stage. Through this award, we celebrate all the individuals, organisations and campaigns which are growing and transforming our industry.”

Award-winning presenter Katlego Maboe hosted the Awards, for the third consecutive year, welcoming a virtual audience to the new look. “While I show you the world, shining, shimmering and splendid, we won’t allow the spread of the virus and the fake news that goes with it to stop us from celebrating and spreading the real news about the very best of the best in the digital industry,” he said, outside with Camps Bay as a backdrop.

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Paula Hulley’s welcome address saw her sitting outside her home on the lawn with her heels kicked off: “Welcome to the 2020 Bookmarks online. Thank you so much for joining us here today and to Katlego for joining us for the third year running. We are very excited to be here online today and I think we can all agree there’s never been a more important time to get together and connect.

"A big thank you to everyone who made this possible. To our headline sponsor DStv Media Sales, thank you for your partnership. Your teams have been incredible. To Newsclip, thank you for making measurement count. To G-Star, thank you for making us look better online, and for keeping us sustainable and fashionable with a good conscience. And to our media partners, thank you to Bizcommunity, to 24.com, to Arena Holdings, to Gumtree, to DTsv Media Sales..."

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NOW WATCHING | #Bookmarks2020 | Proudly living the digital promise now showing on Instagram stories Tune in now @iab_sa CEO Paula Hulley leveling the fields @dstvza @gstarraw_za Link in bio Biz Marketing & Media Team reporting

A post shared by Bizcommunity.com (@bizcommunity) on Mar 19, 2020 at 8:51am PDT

"I would also like to give a special shout out to the Red & Yellow Creative School of Business. Thank you so much for your support as we launch our Front Row initiative,” she continued.

“We hope that that initiative is taken on board by the industry and we are very excited to announce our winners here today. And to our IAB SA councils and committees, thank you for your time invested in making the Bookmarks 2020 possible. Also, a huge shoutout to our 2020 Bookmarks judges, our eight jury chairs and of course our 2020 Bookmarks jury president Andrea Quaye.”

Quaye commented: “We really had a broad range of expertise coming from different industries creative agencies, digital agencies, clients, publishers, but we also managed to get a good enough balance between the more established agencies verses the smaller and up-and-coming agencies, just to make sure that we have a broad enough and inclusive enough perspective of what great work looks like.”

Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB based in the United States even made an appearance from the temporary IAB US headquarters, er, his living room. “Hey, I just want to offer hearty congratulations to the IAB SA and all the Bookmark Award winners. You’re doing some of the most creative digital advertising on earth. Keep it up! Congratulations again!”

In case you missed it, some social highlights:

We are ready @VMLYR_ZA for the #Bookmarks2020 awards - even if we have to do it all over VC pic.twitter.com/5C1J9F8o1H

— Matthew Arnold (@matthewarnold) March 19, 2020

Things are starting to heat up. The anticipation for @iab_sa #bookmarks2020 is ������

A post shared by VMLY&R South Africa (@vmlyrsouthafrica) on Mar 19, 2020 at 8:20am PDT