Why RiseUp’s Global Digital Excellence Awards Shortlist Matters
We’re delighted to share that RiseUp has been shortlisted in four categories at the 2026 Global Digital Excellence Awards: Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year, Standout B2C PPC Campaign of the Year, Standout AI Software Solution and Standout PPC Agency of the Year. The shortlist was announced on 18 September 2026, and the winners will be revealed on 22 October 2026.
What makes this shortlist special for us is the spread. Two of the four places recognise our client work, one recognises the agency itself, and one recognises Fenton AI, the software our own team has built. It is the first time a RiseUp product, rather than a campaign, has reached an awards shortlist.
How the Global Digital Excellence Awards Are Judged
The Global Digital Excellence Awards are organised by Don’t Panic Events and accredited “Outstanding” by the Independent Awards Standards Council’s Awards Trust Mark.
Judging runs in two stages. Every judge reads and pre-scores each entry section by section, and the combined scores decide the shortlist. The shortlisted entries then go to a judging session, where the panel discusses the work and agrees a winner for each category. Judges cannot enter the awards themselves, and any conflict of interest has to be declared.
That matters to us. A shortlist place here comes from the judges’ scores on the written entry and the evidence behind it, not from a public vote.
Our Four Shortlisted Categories
- Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year — “Turning Search into the Start of the Mystery”, with Masters of Mystery
- Standout B2C PPC Campaign of the Year — “Turning Search into the Start of the Mystery”, with Masters of Mystery
- Standout AI Software Solution — Fenton AI
- Standout PPC Agency of the Year — RiseUp
Standout B2C SEO Campaign of the Year
This category recognises consumer SEO work that builds lasting search visibility and measurable commercial growth. Our entry, “Turning Search into the Start of the Mystery”, is our work with Masters of Mystery, the murder mystery game brand selling across the UK, Europe and North America.
The organic programme was built for international growth rather than a single home market: country-specific landing pages, localised keyword research and the technical foundations, including hreflang, that let each market version rank on its own merits. Over twelve months, non-brand organic revenue grew by 182%, and Masters of Mystery now holds the number one category ranking in eight markets.
Standout B2C PPC Campaign of the Year
The same programme is shortlisted in the PPC category, which rewards paid search that combines strategy, creative and efficient spend to deliver real commercial results.
For Masters of Mystery, paid and organic search are run as one system rather than two separate channels. On the paid side, per-market search ROAS rose from 4.1:1 to 5.8:1, and blended ROAS across every channel moved from 4:1 to 6:1. The full channel-by-channel breakdown is in our Masters of Mystery case study.
Standout AI Software Solution
This is the shortlist place we’re proudest of, because it’s for something we built rather than something we ran. Fenton AI is RiseUp’s conversational analytics assistant. Clients connect their Shopify store and ad platforms, then ask questions in plain English. Fenton pulls the real number from their live data and shows his working, with a first answer in under five seconds.
We built Fenton because a dashboard shows you data but rarely gives you the answer. He is trained on the playbooks our team uses across more than £750M of client revenue. Fenton is currently in early access and will be free for RiseUp clients at launch.
Standout PPC Agency of the Year
The final place recognises RiseUp as an agency. We’ve run paid search since 2013, first as Global Search Marketing and now as RiseUp, and we’re a Google Premier Partner with £78M under management.
It is the third time this year our PPC practice has been recognised at agency level, alongside our finalist place for Best Global PPC Agency at the Global Search Awards and our shortlisting for Standout PPC Agency of the Year at the UK Digital Excellence Awards.
What Happens Next
The winners are announced on 22 October 2026. Shortlisted is not the same as won, and we’ll update our awards page with the result either way. Every entry we’ve made this year, and how each one landed, is itemised there.
Thank you to the Masters of Mystery team for trusting us with their growth, and to everyone at RiseUp who built the work behind these four entries.
