NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vibrant, the leader in in-text advertising and provider of “next-generation hyperlinks”, announced 20 worldwide finalists in its second annual in-text advertising competition, the Vibrant Awards. The Vibrant Awards recognize the best of in-text and contextual advertising from around the world. Submitted by the world’s top brand marketers and agencies, each nominee is evaluated by a panel of industry experts from the U.S. and the E.U. and, for the first time this year, online voting will be open to members of the advertising industry by logging on to: www.vibrantawards.com/vote

Winners are chosen based on three criteria:

1) Creativity of the campaign concept and its ability to align with words within web content

2) How in-text advertising contributed to the online campaign overall

3) Whether in-text advertising effectively communicated the brand message

Six awards in total will be announced in mid-July: the Global Platinum Award winner, regarded as the best in-text campaign in the world; two Gold Award Winners (U.S. and EU), and two Silver Award winners (U.S. and EU). Industry voters will act as an additional deciding vote on this years judging panel, helping to determine the winning campaigns in each region.

According to Vibrant co-founder and CEO Doug Stevenson, “For the second year now, we’ve invited the world’s top brands to enter their most creative and effective in-text campaigns which now reach more than 130 million users across the internet. These next generation hyperlinks have become important to the marketing mix and we want to congratulate those advertisers who are refining their hyperlink strategies. These brands recognize that the hyperlink is the ultimate online navigation tool – second only to search.”

The 2009 expert panel of judges who will evaluate the finalists’ campaigns includes:

US Judges:

• Chris Campbell, Executive Creative Director, Interbrand
• Lee Doyle, CEO, Mediaedge:cia
• Sean Finnegan, President, Chief Digital Officer, Starcom Media Vest
• Rebecca Lieb, Vice President, eConsultancy
• David Rittenhouse, Senior Partner, Media Director, neo@Ogilvy
• Josh Stinchcomb, Executive Director, Condé Nast Digital Business Group

EU Judges:

• Rick Corteville, Head of Digital Media, EMEA at Universal McCann
• Dominik Grollmann, Editor in Chief, Internet World Business Magazine
• Dave Hompe, Digital Director, Starcom
• Colwyn Munro, Executive Vice President, IDG Digital Solutions
• Adam Pace, Head of Digital Buying, Opera
• Guy Phillipson, CEO, IAB
• Julia Smith, Sr. Manager, IASH
• Tim Webb, Online Publisher, Business Technology Group @ Incisive Media
• Louisa Wong, Head of Network Advertising, Sky Digital Media

Online voting by members of the advertising industry kicks off June 3^rd. To vote, simply visit www.vibrantawards.com/vote.

The Vibrant Awards finalists are:

1. Nintendo ‘DS Women’

2. Liberty Mutual ‘Responsibility Project’

3. Chevrolet ‘Silverado’

4. IBM ‘Smarter Planet’

5. Caress ‘Evenly Gorgeous’

6. Yellowpages.com ‘Local Search’

7. Hewlett Packard ‘Server Solutions’

8. 7UP ‘Cherry 7UP’

9. AT&T ‘Blue Room’

10. Ragu ‘Recipe Unit’

11. Flora ‘Pro-Active’

12. Intel ‘Centrino 2’

13. Xbox ‘Gears of War 2’

14. Powerade ‘Innergear’

15. Yell.com ‘Local Search’

16. Microsoft ‘Visual Studio’

17. Mini ‘R57 Cabriolet’

18. Volkswagen ‘Wertigkeit’ (Value)

19. Reebok ‘Jukari’

20. MSN ‘Live Search’

About Vibrant

Vibrant is a world leader in contextual technology and provider of the ‘next generation of hyperlinks’, aligning billions of words across the internet with relevant video, information, tools, and advertising. With over 4,000 premium publishers, reaching more than 135 million unique users per month (comScore, April 2009), Vibrant gives top brand marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted advertisements within premium Web content and offers publishers premium editorial tools to re-circulate users throughout their websites. Vibrant manages more than five billion words and phrases each month for top brand advertisers such as Microsoft, Unilever, Warner Bros and Sprint. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, New York, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, with more than 200 employees. Vibrant's rapid growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists. For more information, visit: www.vibrantmedia.com, www.vibrantmedia.co.uk, www.vibrantmedia.de, www.vibrantmedia.fr.