Some brands truly shined when it came to using the smartphone and tablet channels for advertising and promotions.

The winners of the Most Effective Mobile Marketing titles were announced at a 2013 awards ceremony in London, recently, with top brands grabbing up some of the most coveted positions.

Entries of the winners came from countries around the world but primarily involved large corporations.

This year’s Most Effective Mobile Marketing Awards winners include brands such as Colgate, Pepsi Co., Orange, Specsavers, Mothercare, and Warburtons. Entries for the winners came from around the globe, with countries that include the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Poland, and India.

There were 270 attendees representing the brands, agencies and firms for the Most Effective Mobile Marketing awards ceremony.

More of the brands that came out on top at this ceremony included The Body Shop, TUI Travel, the British Journal of Photography, and Universal Music. There were also agencies that received awards, including Golden Gekko, OMD, AKQA, Appitude Media, Iris Mobile, Nimbletank, Upstream, Manning Gottlieb OMD, Leo Burnette, Publicis Blueprint, and Initiative.

The awards for two different categories were given to Mothercare. Their partnership with Demandware was seen as the most effective m-commerce solution, and they also had the best b2c app. There was particular praise for this company’s application as it provides a comprehensive advice mixture, which includes a feature for a pregnancy guide that is broken down week by week. It also allows consumers to shop the entire line of products at Mothercare.

The partnership between Warburton and Golden Gekko received the award for the b2b app, Red Insights Tablet. It is used by the Retail Field team of the baker for the management of inventory throughout the United Kingdom’s over 20,000 different retail outlets. It is believed that every year, 5,000 man-days worth of time are saved in data entry because of this application.

In terms of the most effective mobile marketing, itself, the best advertising campaign award was given to the partnership between Intel and OMD, for a crowdsourcing campaign that employed Shazam for encouraging X-Factor viewers, last year, to star in an ad that would run at the end of the final show.

Report highlights the growth of mobile sales and traffic

IBM has released a new report concerning the performance of e-commerce on Thanksgiving and Black Friday of this year. The report shows that online sales reached new heights this year, with mobile sales showing record growth. Retailers had been anticipating that mobile commerce would have a strong showing during the 2013 holiday shopping season, but many have been surprised at just how many people have taken to shopping from their mobile devices this year.

Black Friday proves popular with mobile shoppers

According to IBM’s report, the average order value for online consumers was $135.57 on Thanksgiving Day, a 2.2% increase over what order value had been reported in 2012. Thanksgiving Day saw the greatest degree of foot traffic to physical stores, but consumers opted to shop from their mobile devices during Black Friday. The report shows that mobile traffic to retail websites grew by 39%. Mobile sales also showed healthy growth, with sales spiking 43% over what they had been on Black Friday of 2012.

Smartphones are leading the charge in mobile commerce

Smartphones were the most popular mobile commerce platform for most consumers. Many favored iOS devices for their mobile shopping forays, but Android devices have been growing more popular for mobile commerce in recent months. The report shows that the majority of mobile sales came from consumers based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Efforts of retailers may be paying off

Retailers have been hard at work trying to engage mobile consumers. Throughout 2013, many retailers have been teaming with mobile commerce firms in order to provide consumers with different and more convenient ways to shop and pay for products. In order to entice consumers, many retailers have been offering special discounts specifically for mobile shoppers. These initiatives have proven quite effective, as IBM’s report shows the strong growth in mobile sales and traffic that have been reported this year.