Last month, Microsoft announced Wickfire LLC among its finalists for the company’s Advertising Partner Awards, an annual event that recognizes and celebrates esteemed standouts in the digital advertising industry. Wickfire was chosen out of a pool of hundreds of industry innovators as a finalist in the Rising Star of the Year category, an award that recognizes partners who have demonstrated an accelerated focus within the last year with Microsoft Advertising.
Each nominee has partnered with Microsoft Advertising, whether that be through optimizing its available data technology, promoting brand awareness, or another form of advocacy. Microsoft Advertising announced that this year’s theme for their Partner Awards is “Forward Together,” an homage to the importance of partnership, especially during such a challenging year. As described in the event’s foreword, Microsoft Advertising Partner Awards are designed to highlight the partners that “go above and beyond to ensure their clients are showing up in all the right places, in the most impactful ways.”
Wickfire fit seamlessly with this theme by promoting viewership on its review sites and increasing traffic to retailer sites. In 2020, Wickfire’s primary consumer-facing site, Buyersguide.org, turned its focus on efforts to increase traffic. To meet its ambitious goals, the company looked to combine its proprietary platform with the features of Microsoft Advertiser, such as the Microsoft Advertiser API, search syndication, enhanced sitelink extensions, and more.
By doing this, Buyersguide.org saw a 300% increase in consumer traffic within the year, hitting and exceeding growth expectations. As Buyersguide.org succeeded, the e-commerce businesses it partners with also succeeded. This growth created incremental intent-driven traffic, meaning that consumers who were intending to buy a product were landing on merchant and retail pages showcasing products that were right for their needs. The data provided by Microsoft Advertising helped streamline and propel this, contributing valuable information that put Buyersguide.org and its retailers in front of consumers who are intending to buy.
Because of the notable traction that Buyersguide.org has seen within the last year, Microsoft also showcased Wickfire as a case study that exemplifies the successes of a Microsoft Advertising partnership. Microsoft Advertising describes Wickfire as “a leading digital marketing company focused on search marketing,” one that “supports retailers, helping them get their products and services in front of consumers with special offers.” The case study notes the efficiency behind the collaboration, noting that Wickfire’s use of Microsoft Advertising has led to an exponential growth over the last year.
The collaboration of Wickfire’s proprietary platform and the features of Microsoft Advertising led Wickfire to immense growth in 2020, and the company continues to see optimal growth in the early stages of 2021. True to the mission of this year’s Microsoft Advertising Partner awards, this strong partnership has allowed advertisers, retailers, and consumers to truly move forward thanks to optimized digital advertising.
This is Wickfire’s first nomination for the Microsoft Advertising Partner Awards. Winners will be announced virtually on February 25, 2021 at 5PM EST.
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