TripAdvisor®, the world’s largest travel website*, is pleased to announce the winners of its 2012 creative advertising challenge, which offered the travel industry the unique opportunity to showcase their creativity and compete for the chance to win from a total prize fund of USD 1.5 million in advertising value on TripAdvisor. The campaigns were judged by a panel of TripAdvisor sales and marketing experts.

Tourism Northern Territory has been crowned the winner across six markets namely, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, Italy and India and receives USD 800,000 in click-based advertising (CPM) media value on TripAdvisor.

Tourism Northern Territory’s entry, created by Visual Jazz Isobar in Sydney, has been designed to educate potential travellers on the benefits of Northern Territory by bringing the destination to life with ‘Virtual Tour Guides’. The creative campaign will bring local tour guide characters to life in visual and interactive display formats by allowing the users to ask questions about the area and receive answers to them in a resourceful, playful and energetic way.

Cindy Tan, Vice President of Display Sales, APAC for TripAdvisor said, “The judges for Australia really appreciated this entry as it is both very visually enticing while also offering educational details about the region from local experts. This is sure to resonate well with TripAdvisor’s prospective travellers who are looking to be inspired about where to travel to next. It’s also certainly got a fun take on the Northern Territory sense of humour which was an added plus!”

She continued, “We were extremely impressed with both the quantity and quality of entries from all over the EMEA and APAC region, it was great to see brands extending their focus beyond sales-led creative and instead think about how they can use TripAdvisor and online display formats to engage and build their brand profiles to achieve long term strategic goals.”

The winning campaign in Australia will run on TripAdvisor from September to November 2012.