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.

Mike Zeederberg, managing director of Zuni and Creative Showcase’s chair of judges, said: “There was great innovation in this month’s entries, with the top three al using an interesting take on technologies to connect with the consumer audience.”