VML’s Missing Person Pre-Roll campaign for the Australian Federal Police has scooped the top prize in the latest Creative Showcase Awards by the IAB.

VML’s campaign started with the hunt for a cost-effective way to search for new leads on missing person cold cases.

Using YouTube’s unavoidable five-second pre-roll, VML created a geo-targeted missing person banner. Instead of showing the ‘skip’ button, the viewer was given two options – ‘yes, I have’ and ‘no, I haven’t’.

The pre-roll was seen by more than 1.2 million people during Missing Persons Week and 238 viewers clicked ‘yes, I have’, providing new information on cold cases.

Second place in the bi-monthly awards went to Lavender with its interactive Pay Pig campaign for Westpac, and The Monkeys took out third place with its Sounds campaign for Intel.