It’s on. The 2016 Facebook Innovation Spotlight.

Innovation wins

It’s no secret that competition is a driving force behind innovation.

Make it faster. Make it better. Make it more unique. If you don’t, there’s a good chance someone else will. While competition tends to occur organically in our business, and innovation often carries its own rewards, the 2016 Facebook Innovation Spotlight aims to take things up a notch.

Formerly called the Facebook Innovation Competition, with entries limited to Facebook Marketing Partners, Spotlight features many changes beyond the new name. While Spotlight is still about highlighting cutting edge marketing technology and services, 2016 will be much more open. We’re encouraging any developer, agency, or Partner building a technology or providing a service on any of our marketing APIs to enter. If you’re helping our marketers succeed, you qualify.

Second, there are more opportunities to win. Spotlight is actually three competitions that will run consecutively throughout the year, each with a different theme. Three Excellence in Innovation winners will emerge from each of the three competitions, for a total of nine throughout the year. These top innovators will be up for Facebook Innovator of the Year award at this fall’s Global Partner Summit. The three themes include:

Creativity Your technology or service helps source and deliver quality content and creative at scale.

Real Results Your technology or service solves complex marketer challenges in distinctive, innovative ways.

Personalized Marketing at Scale Your technology or service enables personalization that allows marketers to use it at scale.

The Creativity competition is open now with entries due, April 8. Click here to enter.

Innovation incentives

And what would a competition be without rewards? Spotlight offers many. The top innovations will be prominently featured at some of the industry’s biggest events— like Cannes and dmexco. We’re also committing up to a total of $500,000 of ad credits to help our winners get noticed.

Hooray for all

Though competition is a big part of Spotlight, we’re especially excited to have this opportunity to showcase some of the creative minds that have helped take Facebook marketing become what it is today. Hopefully you will also see Spotlight as a celebration of the partnerships that have been a huge part of creating our current momentum.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Go to the 2016 Facebook Innovation Spotlight to find out more and enter.