About the Awards
As the world has changed in the span of a few years, marketers have redefined how they communicate with consumers. From the heartwarming to the heart-racing - and everything in between - YouTube has seen how incredible digital content can drive equally powerful results.
The YouTube Works Awards, in partnership with Kantar, is back to honor the brightest minds behind groundbreaking and effective YouTube campaigns of the past period.
This year’s Awards comes packed with three new Agency of the Year Award categories, new all-star jurors, and more chances to be recognized locally and across Southeast Asia.
How It Works
Submit your best work from March 1, 2024 to April 30, 2025 to be reviewed by our panel of industry leaders in two rounds.
Our local juries will select category winners and a Best of Country winner for each country. These winners will serve as the SEA finalists, from which our Grand Jury will select the regional winners.
The Grand Prix will be awarded to the submission that best demonstrates brilliant results, storytelling, and effectiveness.
Categories
The Big Bang
Awarded to the most effective launch to build awareness for a new product or launch. The launch (or relaunch) including (not limited to) new brand or sub-brand, new product or service, new brand positioning, new tagline, etc.
Multiformat Storytelling
This award celebrates the campaign that masterfully adapted original storytelling across various ad durations, formats, and/or devices. It recognizes the creative vision and strategic decisions that allowed the story to resonate with audiences in different viewing contexts, maximizing impact and engagement.
Masters of Media
The Masters of Media award celebrates campaigns showcasing brilliant and innovative media strategies, with a strong focus on the effective and responsible application of AI, that deliver exceptional media and/or business results and demonstrate marketing excellence. This award recognizes how marketers leverage AI-powered solutions to enhance performance, optimize campaigns, generate assets, and drive impactful outcomes.
Brands & Creators
Awarded to the brand and YouTube Creator(s) partnership that best exemplifies strategic collaboration and creative excellence. Winning campaigns will demonstrate a deep understanding of consumer and cultural trends, leveraging the creators’ community and their authentic voices deeply in the campaign. The award recognizes campaigns where creators were integral to the strategy from inception, showcasing how this close partnership and tailored approach drove exceptional results across the marketing funnel, including significant social buzz and positive brand impact.
Best of Festive
Awarded to the most outstanding campaign that celebrates key festive seasons. This award recognizes work that is able to build a connection with consumers in a locally relevant yet refreshing story, and compliment their message with strategic media orchestration to maximise impact in this key festive moments (i.e. Tết, Ramadan, Christmas, Songkran, Valentine's Day, Independence Day, etc.)
Best of Country
Awarded to the most effective, outstanding and innovative campaign of each country - from insight to media to creative. This will be awarded at the Local Jury’s discretion, with special consideration granted to the winners of all submissions-based categories.
Grand Prix
The ultimate accolade awarded to the campaign that breaks barriers across Southeast Asia, and demonstrates excellence throughout the entire process, from creative idea, to media execution, and measurable results. The Grand Prix will be awarded at the Grand Jury’s discretion, with special consideration granted to the winners of all submissions-based categories.
Agency of the Year AwardsNew!
Media Agency of the Year
Awarded to the media agency contributing to client success, through winning submissions at the YouTube Works Awards SEA 2025.
The winner of this category is the media agency that earned the highest overall score from entries at all qualifying levels: local finalists, local runners-ups, local winners, and SEA winners.
Creative Agency of the Year
Awarded to the creative agency contributing to client success, through winning submissions at the YouTube Works Awards SEA 2025.
The winner of this category is the creative agency that earned the highest overall score from entries at all qualifying levels: local finalists, local runners-ups, local winners, and SEA winners.
Specialty Agency of the Year
Awarded to the specialty agency contributing to client success, through winning submissions at the YouTube Works Awards SEA 2025.
The winner of this category is the specialty agency that earned the highest overall score from entries at all qualifying levels: local finalists, local runners-ups, local winners, and SEA winners. Specialty Agency covers the following type of agencies, but not limited to, Creator Agency, Influencer Agency, Social Media Management Agency, Social-Commerce/Live-streaming agency, and/or Multi-Channel Network (MCNs).
Contest begins
March 17, 2025
Submissions end
April 30, 2025
Winners announced
October 2025
The 2024 SEA Winners
Meet the SEA winners for this year's YouTube Works Awards, who took home the gold in representing the best YouTube campaigns across Southeast Asia. These outstanding campaigns set a new standard, impressing our grand jury with their groundbreaking creativity, transformative innovation, and resounding success. A huge round of applause to all the winners!
Sammakorn NOT Sanpakorn | Thailand
Sammakorn, Heroleads, Choojai and Friends
Faced with a major branding challenge, Sammakorn delighted viewers with laughter through Thai-style humour and self-mockery to cleverly differentiate and solidify their brand identity. With the help of YouTube Skippable In-Stream ads and precise key audience targeting, their long form storytelling delivered double digit growth for the brand on View-Through Rate, Search Uplift and new users to the Sammakorn website.
GrabFood The Greatest Knockout | Thailand
GrabFood, M&C Saatchi Performance, Spa-Hakuhodo
With online food delivery services constantly battling it out daily to win over price-sensitive consumers, GrabFood employed a savvy mix of a widely loved boxing metaphor, major celebrity endorsements and a clever media mix strategy to deliver the knockout win. Deploying time-based targeting of short form videos across meal times to hungry foodies, GrabFood landed maximum reach and engagement at a minimum cost, with double digit sales growth to boot.
No Drama, Just Quality Used Cars | Singapore
Carro
To address the lack of transparency in the used car industry, Southeast Asia's largest online used car marketplace Carro aimed to relaunch their pre-owned vehicle service with an original story of trust. Combined with YouTube's Skippable in-stream ads and YouTube Select Lineups, Carro touched on their audience's affinity for K Drama to showcase the no-drama transaction in buying cars from the brand, allowing the brand to double their View-Through Rate vs industry benchmark and bump up lead volume growth in just 1 quarter.
Best Taste by Nescafe RTD | Thailand
Nescafe CLC Espresso Roast, UM Thrive Thailand, Leo Burnett
To establish their newly launched canned coffee as beloved by all Thais, Nescafe ditched traditional product placements and integrated their product in Thailand's most popular TV and YouTube news program HoneKraSae, hosted by popular YouTube creator Noom Kanchai. This partnership set the stage for further collaborations with Thai creators in a series of chaotic comedy and live taste-test showdowns, amplified by YouTube launch formats like Masthead, VVC and VRC. With sky high views and engagement, this collaboration pushed Nescafe from Challenger to Lead brand, doubling their sales volume growth vs category benchmark.
Sobat Hemat | Indonesia
GrabTransport, M&C Saatchi Performance, Grab Creative Studio
To stay ahead of competition, Grab needed a personalized way to win over a highly penetrated market. By localizing different story versions to convey a sense of freedom in mobility, Grab made the most of personalization tools from YouTube, Google Creative Studio and Weather API to deliver the right message to the right person in the right context, and significantly reduce costs at the same time. With a lower Cost Per Impression and a higher Click-Through Rate vs manually optimized campaigns, topped with an increase in penetration, Grab had improved campaign efficiency and effectiveness with the help of Google AI.
Forgiveness | Malaysia
RHB Bank, FCB SHOUT
To surface the spirit of Ramadan in a divisive culture, RHB brought out the power of empathy by heroing one act of kindness to make a difference in society. RHB's Raya ad recounts the true story of a Malay lawyer, Ahmad Zaharil, who helped a poor Indian woman in 1998. Two decades later, the woman’s son, inspired by Zaharil, became a lawyer himself. The ad, which highlighted forgiveness and Raya’s spirit, took a bold approach by featuring a story about racial harmony amidst local sensitivities. Using Video View Campaigns, Skippable In-Stream Ads and In-Feed Video Ads, RHB turned the story into their most loved Raya campaign, beat industry benchmarks and inspired the #MZB365 movement to promote forgiveness and nation-building during Ramadan and beyond.
Don't Know? Kasih No! | Indonesia
BCA, iProspect, Flock (PT Langit Kreatif Indonesia)
As one of Indonesia’s leading banking institutions, BCA had a mission to combat fraud by empowering consumers to recognise and mitigate potential cybersecurity risks. For this, the brand delivered an educational message through a well-crafted narrative that blended nostalgia and comedy, with a campaign carefully curated across all elements - from actor, storyline, cinematic delivery and call to action. Not only did the campaign capture audience attention across different generations, but utilized YouTube's Video View Campaign and Video Reach Campaign to boost reach, engagement and improve awareness on the movement.
The 2024 Local Winners
Meet the local winners for last year's YouTube Works Awards, who will be competing in the final Southeast Asia round. These exceptional campaigns rose above the competition, captivating our local judges with their creativity, effectiveness and impact. Congratulations to all local winners!
Explore the complete list of local winners below.
Best practices
Looking for inspiration? Here's a line-by-line guide inspired by the submissions of previous winners on how to answer each entry form question meaningfully, as vetted by YouTube Works Awards SEA 2024 Grand Jury head and Kantar APAC Creative Leadership.
Our judges are looking for campaigns that have creatively, strategically, and effectively leveraged YouTube to achieve a clear business impact. Make sure you set the scene and be clear about your KPIs. The metrics you provide will help our judges understand your work and the challenges of your category and marketplace.
Helpful hints:
- Consider co-writing your submission; media and creative collaborations help to tell the full story
- Tell a story with a beginning (objectives), middle (approach), and end (impact)
- Stick to simple and concise
- Include critical context around your creative
- Remember we need all relevant media referenced in your submission
- Note any factors external to YouTube that could have impacted results
- Share as many metrics as you can and include objectives, KPIs, and benchmarks
How to enter
Identify your most effective YouTube campaigns from the eligibility period, review the Terms & Conditions (ID, TH, VN), learn more from the Submission Guide, and fill out the submission form below.
The YouTube Works Awards are easy to enter. Even better, it’s free. So if you’re part of a marketing, media, creative, or agency team, show us your best-in-class digital work for your chance to be seen around the world.
Need more help?
To ensure a smooth journey, we’re happy to guide you through the process. Check out our FAQs or book a session at YouTube Works Awards SEA Office Hours with Kantar. In the office hours, you can find further tips on how to craft a winning submission, learn more about the program, and get your questions answered. Book a session with Kantar or reach us anytime at youtube-works-sea@google.com.
Book a sessionDemonstrate how your video campaign pushed the boundaries creatively and drove business results on YouTube. For full submission details and guidelines, please refer to our submission guide.