Global go-getters: Who ruled the world at the 2025 Partner Awards?

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Going global: See who won big at the Amazon Ads Global Partner Awards in 2025. From AI innovators to performance optimizers, these were the partners who swept.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: awards season.

So get those jazz hands going, practice your gracious-despite-losing face, and polish the trophies, because we’re getting into the global giants who rocked the Amazon Ads Partner Awards. These are all about the agencies and technology partners who demonstrate advertising excellence with Amazon Ads.

Like any good awards show, we can’t start by announcing the winners (we gotta milk it a little). Allow us to instead dabble in a bit of self-indulgence, just like any awards show host, and get into what it is that makes these so prestigious—starting with what they really celebrate.

The golden questions

For those unfamiliar, you may be asking yourselves, “What are the Partner Awards?” So glad you asked. These awards celebrate agencies and technology partners for driving advertiser success on Amazon and beyond. The Partner Awards have two divisions: Global and Regional. This article specifically talks about the Global Award winners. Don’t fret, though; you can expect a follow-up soon that gets into the Regional Award winners.

And the categories for the Global Awards are:

• Performance Optimization
• AI Innovation
• Global Expansion
• Technology Innovation

Each contender submitted showcases of a unique advertiser success story as an Amazon Ads partner. Global partners referenced a successful campaign strategy for an advertising client that took place in any country or region (or worldwide). The advertiser can be from a brand that sells products or services on or off the Amazon store, and they can be based anywhere in the world.

Nominees join an elite community of industry leaders alongside past winners and finalists. Each winner receives official recognition from Amazon Ads, as well as both physical and digital trophies. The cherry on top is the exposure these partners receive along with their status as winners. So let’s talk about some winners.

Performance Optimization

God bless the optimizers. This category is about building sophisticated strategies using audience insights and innovative ads solutions to optimize campaigns. It celebrates the fixers, the remixers, and, yes, the optimizers.

And the winner is: Amerge + e.l.f. Cosmetics

Amerge helped e.l.f. Cosmetics break through their growth plateau to become the #1 mass cosmetics brand on Amazon UK while significantly improving their position in Germany. By combining Amazon Marketing Cloud insights with their proprietary dashboard, they identified opportunities to reduce defensive spending and reach new customers more efficiently.

Through strategic integration of Amazon DSP and Sponsored Ads, as well as sophisticated negative targeting, they ensured advertising spend reached incremental audiences. This insights-driven approach helped them shift from top-of-search dominance to scalable growth. By optimizing based on full-funnel signals and category trends, Amerge helped e.l.f. achieve substantial growth in both markets while improving return on ad spend.

AI Innovation

If the alphabet had stars, A and I would shine a little brighter than the rest in 2025. This year, Amazon Ads AI solutions unleashed tons of new potential. The Partner Awards want to shine a light on those who took the cyberbull by the horns.

And the winner is: Atom11 + Gala

Atom11 helped Gala overcome declining sales through innovative use of their Ask AI sales fluctuation analyzer. Atom11’s AI solution analyzed over 15 metrics across advertising and retail insights, combining insights from Amazon Ads API and Selling Partner API to identify root causes.

This comprehensive analysis revealed that performance drops had multiple causes, from pricing issues to creative effectiveness. By providing unified, actionable insights, their AI-powered approach helped Gala shift from short-term fixes to strategic adjustments across catalog, creative, and media.

Global Expansion

Why go big when you can go global? This award highlights the innovators who help brands expand into new marketplaces through strategic and nuanced approaches.

And the winner is: Hofan + Plaud

Hofan helped Plaud launch a new voice-capturing hardware category across 13 Amazon marketplaces, building global recognition from scratch with limited resources. Through a repeatable international launch engine, they combined insight-driven country selection with localized creator-led messaging and a modular advertising approach.

Using Amazon Marketing Cloud and their proprietary AI system, they tailored the mix of Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Products to each market’s unique characteristics. For example, they emphasized top-funnel education in Japan, where consideration cycles were longer. Meanwhile, they prioritized Sponsored Products in Mexico, where conversion behavior was faster. This insights-driven approach helped Plaud achieve top category rankings and significant market share across regions while maintaining efficient advertising costs.

Technology Innovation

The final category of the evening is a big one. In an increasingly digital world, those who don’t innovate also shouldn’t teach, because what are we learning from those who don’t innovate? This category recognizes a partner who developed a scalable solution for advertisers.

And the winner is: Gigi + Beekeeper’s Naturals

Beekeeper’s Naturals struggled to find real-time cross-channel measurement. Gigi developed an innovative platform that unifies Amazon and direct-to-consumer insights through Amazon Marketing Cloud and AWS Clean Rooms. Their solution integrates Shopify signals securely via Fivetran, enabling immediate insights and sophisticated audience building for streaming TV campaigns.

Through their unique Reach Curve API tool, Gigi helped Beekeeper’s Naturals predict audience saturation and optimize spending efficiency before deployment. This comprehensive approach allowed the brand to understand the full impact of combining streaming TV with Amazon DSP and Sponsored Ads, while proving performance beyond last-touch attribution.

Cue the playoff music

Well, folks, there you have it. The winners of the global categories of the 2025 Amazon Ads Partner Awards. Whether they dazzled you with data, amplified AI, gave picture-perfect performance, or took over the whole dang world, these winners truly wowed us all.

Learn more about the Partner Awards here, and consider entering yourself for 2026. Plus, stay tuned. We’ll be back shortly to talk about the winners of the regional categories real soon.