By Business & Finance 
Chairman of the judging panel, eircom’s Gary Disley pictured with the 2014 eircom Spider Award hosts, TV personalities Jennifer Maguire and Bernard O’Shea.
The 2014 eircom Spider Awards, which are set to place on Thursday, November 20th at The Convention Centre Dublin, are now open for nominations.
Entering their 19th year, the awards are the longest standing and most prestigious digital awards in Ireland. Each year the awards aim to find Ireland’s best and brightest digital influencers.
The categories at this year’s eircom Spider Awards are designed to acknowledge and promote businesses and communities who are making their mark through technological advancements, innovation and e-commerce. Similar to previous years, the awards will highlight digital achievements across a range of categories including: financial services, tourism, charity, retail, news, education, entertainment, web design, user experience, social media and sports.
This year, in recognition of the evolving digital landscape three new categories have been added:
- Web Analytics and Optimisation – The Spider Award for Web Analytics and Optimisation will be awarded to a company that best measures, collates, analyses and reports internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimising their web presence. The entries will be judged on a case study submission.
- Rich Media – The Rich Media Spider Award will be awarded for creativity and engagement with internet users. A huge focus of the judging will be based on the conversion impact the media had and the Judging Panel will be looking for metrics and screenshots.
- Best Digital Game – This new category for 2014 is seeking entries from game developers who have created an online game that is well designed. Original artwork, environmental design, character motion, general playability of the game, how intuitive the game is to play and multiple platforms/devices/operating systems will all factor in the judges’ determination of the winner.
Chairman of the judging panel and marketing director, eircom Business Solutions, Gary Disley commented: “It’s important to recognise and reward the ground breaking work that is being carried out every day in the digital space. We have a wealth of talent in Ireland with small community groups, creative agencies and large businesses all demonstrating huge creativity and innovation. Each year at the eircom Spider Awards we are blown away by the energy and ingenuity in this area. The digital environment has evolved massively in Ireland and we have come from a position where digital campaigns were seen as nice to have to now fully recognising how critical digital is to everything we do. The judging panel is really looking forward to reviewing this year’s entries as each year we think the quality can’t get any better but it always does.”
The closing date for all nominations in the 2014 eircom Spider Awards is Wednesday, October 1st 2014.
For further information on the awards, profiles of the judging panel and for details on the entry process for each category please visit www.eircomspiders.ie
2014 eircom Spider Award hosts, Jennifer Maguire and Bernard O’Shea.
