Kia Ora Digital and The Collagen Co won Best Use of AI in Search at the APAC Search Awards 2026, for the campaign AI-Led Global Search Growth.
This page is the judges' verdict and what sits behind it. For the announcement, read Kia Ora Digital Wins Best Use of AI in Search.
What the judges said
The video above is our own recreation of the judges' comments. It was not produced by the APAC Search Awards. The wording is quoted verbatim from the official judge comments document.
"This campaign demonstrates a genuinely commercial application of AI that drove incremental growth unattainable through traditional methods. By transforming search from a support function into a predictive growth engine, they've proven AI's strategic value beyond automation, creating a forward-looking system that anticipates opportunities rather than simply reacting to them."
Why it matters
This is the win that marks the pivot.
For three years the citations turned on the Revenue Forecasting Tool. Here the forecasting tool drops out of the comment entirely and AI takes its place. The same panel that had been rewarding a modelling method is now rewarding an AI system, on the same client account.
Two phrases are worth keeping. "Genuinely commercial application of AI" draws the line between AI that produces work and AI that produces revenue. And "predictive growth engine" describes search that anticipates rather than reacts, which is the argument Ben has been taking to conference stages through 2026.
That argument is set out in full in Why ChatGPT Recommends Some Brands and Not Others and AI Search and ChatGPT Marketing. The service is AI search optimisation; the client work is the Collagen Co case study.
