Every March 27, the ad tech industry celebrates World AdTech Day.
Adsterra started the tradition in 2024, and it picked up fast. By 2025, over 20 companies were official partners and CPV Lab was a partner since their start. People shared their stories under #WorldAdTechDay, companies ran promotions, and for one day the usual competitors felt more like colleagues.
This year, there’s something new. For the first time, World AdTech Day will include an awards program.
And… we have some news. CPV Lab got nominated. More on that in a minute.
What are the World AdTech Day 2026 awards?
The World AdTech Day Awards are a new recognition program organized alongside the annual March 27 celebration.
Categories include:
- “Passion to Educate” – for companies that invest in teaching and sharing knowledge
- “Community builder” – for companies who act like influencers and know how to put people together
- “Industry Voice” – for people or companies who talk about our industry
- “Bold Innovator” – for companies pushing technical boundaries.
Additional categories may be announced closer to the event.
What caught our attention about these categories is that they’re about behavior, not size. You don’t win “Passion to Educate” by having the biggest marketing budget. You win it by actually helping people learn. That’s a different kind of recognition than most industry awards, which tend to reward revenue or market share.
Why ad tech needs its own awards
If you ask somebody about affiliate marketing: most people have no idea what we do.
You can try explaining S2S postbacks or multivariate testing at a dinner party. Trust us, we’ve tried.
The response is usually a polite smile and a quick change of subject.
Ad tech runs behind the scenes.
The programmers, the media buyers, the affiliate managers, the people debugging tracking pixels at midnight… nobody throws a parade for that work.
That’s what Gala Grigoreva, CMO at Adsterra, was getting at when she said about World AdTech Day: “It proves that in the ad tech industry, there are no competitors, only a shared mission to advance digital advertising.”
The awards add something concrete to that idea.
Instead of a general “good job, everyone” once a year, specific companies and teams get called out for specific contributions. That’s how you build a culture where sharing knowledge and taking risks actually gets rewarded.
CPV Lab’s “Passion to Educate” nomination
OK, now the personal part.
CPV Lab has been nominated for the World AdTech Day Award in the “Passion to Educate” category.
We’re not going to pretend we expected this. When we started, affiliate marketing tracking meant spreadsheets. A lot of spreadsheets. There weren’t many places explaining how to set up proper tracking, how multivariate testing actually works, or why your conversion data doesn’t match your traffic source’s numbers. So we started writing about it.
That turned into a few things over the years:
The CPV Tracker Blog has over 100 articles: tracking guides, expert interviews, case studies, and breakdowns of how things like S2S postbacks, cookie-based tracking, and AI-powered optimization actually work in practice. These aren’t marketing pieces. They’re the kind of stuff media buyers bookmark and come back to.
The CPV One Academy is a structured learning hub with sections on AI, S2S tracking, optimization, advanced funnels, fundamentals, and a glossary. If you’re new to tracking, you can go from zero to running real campaigns.
The Champions of Performance Marketing interview series features people like Thomas McMahon from ClickBank talking about compliance, Raanan Rosenbaum on ad tracking, Pierre Bertin on push notification traffic, Joey Babineau on landing page strategy, and Evan Weber on LinkedIn and Google Ads for affiliate marketing. Real strategies from real practitioners.
And our documentation at doc.cpvlab.pro covers everything from initial setup to advanced configuration. Because good software shouldn’t require guesswork.
Getting nominated for “Passion to Educate” tells us this work matters to the community. That’s a good feeling.
The ad tech community in 2026
We’ve learned something from running the Champions of Performance Marketing podcast: the people who do best in this industry are the ones who share what they know.
Every expert we’ve interviewed has been generous with their strategies, their mistakes, their actual numbers. Nobody held back because it might help a competitor. Same story at industry conferences and events.
That’s the same spirit behind World AdTech Day.
The 2025 celebration had 20+ official partners. Companies that compete directly with each other in the market were posting under the same hashtag, celebrating the same industry. Adsterra (ad network), Binom and Keitaro (self-hosted trackers, our competitors), Voluum and Redtrack (also trackers, also our competitors), CrakRevenue (CPA network), and many more.
We compete on products. We compete on features. We compete on pricing and support. But the people doing this work… they’re colleagues, not enemies. The awards formalize that attitude. They say: we notice when you do something that helps everyone, not just yourself.
What’s next for CPV Lab
We’re not slowing down on education. More expert interviews are in the pipeline. More Academy content. More practical guides for media buyers and affiliates who are figuring out tracking for the first time or switching from basic tools to something more serious.
On the product side, we’re started building Version 13 with AI features: CPV Copilot for campaign assistance, AI Smart Rotations for automated traffic distribution, AI Page Validation for landing page checks, and MV Lab AI Assistant for multivariate testing. These ship later this year.
Julia (our CEO) said that maybe next we’ll go for the “Bold Innovator” category. We’ll see. For now, “Passion to Educate” fits.
How to celebrate World AdTech Day 2026
March 27 is the day. Here’s what you can do:
- Post your ad tech story on social media with #WorldAdTechDay
- Download the official branding elements from worldadtechday.com
- Check out the award categories and nominees! Vote for your favorite, aka CPV Lab 🙂
- Read our original World AdTech Day celebration article
Whether you run campaigns, write code, manage affiliates, or build tracking platforms… this day is yours. Happy World AdTech Day.
Frequently asked questions
What is World AdTech Day?
World AdTech Day is an annual celebration on March 27 for everyone who works in advertising technology. Adsterra launched it in 2024. The day brings together ad networks, tracking platforms, affiliate marketers, media buyers, developers, and other ad tech professionals to recognize the work that goes on behind the scenes of digital advertising. CPV Lab was a supporter of this initiative from day 1.
What are the World AdTech Day 2026 award categories?
The confirmed categories so far are “Passion to Educate” (for companies that invest in education and knowledge sharing), “Community Builder”, “Industry Voice” and “Bold Innovator” (for companies pushing technical boundaries in ad tech). Additional categories may be announced closer to March 27.
Who started World AdTech Day?
Adsterra, a global ad network, created World AdTech Day and launched it in 2024. Adsterra organizes the event but positions it as a community-wide celebration rather than a company event. In 2025, over 20 ad tech companies were official partners, including CPV Lab | CPV One ad tracker and AffiliateMastermind community.
Why was CPV Lab nominated for “Passion to Educate”?
CPV Lab was nominated for the “Passion to Educate” award because of its consistent investment in educational content for the performance marketing community. This includes the CPV Tracker Blog (100+ articles covering tracking, optimization, and expert interviews), the CPV One Academy (a structured learning hub), the Champions of Performance Marketing podcast, and comprehensive product documentation at doc.cpvlab.pro.
How can I participate in World AdTech Day 2026?
Share your ad tech story or work on social media using the hashtag #WorldAdTechDay on March 27, 2026. You can download official branding elements from worldadtechday.com. Companies can run promotions, webinars, or social media campaigns tied to the day.
———
[Editor’s Note: CPV Lab has been an official partner of World AdTech Day since 2024. Learn more about our tracking solutions at cpvlab.pro.]
Author: Elizabeta Kuzevska
Elizabeta is a certified Digital marketer with 15+ years of experience and she creates educational content for CPV Lab and CPV One, helping affiliate marketers and media buyers navigate the ever-changing performance marketing landscape. She is also Co-Founder of Revenue Experts AI, building AI Revenue Intelligence Systems powered by 100+ specialized agents. Her methodology integrates multi-agent architectures with human expertise to transform how B2B companies generate revenue.
