Last night in NYC, AIMCLEAR® scored three 2026 US Search Awards. That includes our ELEVENTH consecutive Best Integrated Agency trophy. We’ve now notched 43 total wins across numerous categories (the most of any entrant in US Search Awards history), spanning 13 years 🏆. Thank you to our fabulous clients who trust us with their ambitious goals. We’re honored to work with you.
I’m running out of ways to describe how proud I am of our AIMCLEAR team. It’s wonderfully gratifying to receive this year’s accolades for our clients and teammates. As we head into our 20th year, I stepped out from 4 years locked in our storied marketing AI Lab to once again help direct the agency’s future hands-on.
It seemed appropriate to lean into classic marketing values, as AI recasts “branding” to pre-internet concepts. We’ve been fearless in refocusing our roles, especially the human/technological fit.
If you knew us in January, you would barely recognize our silo-smashing tech stack, research depth, role flexibility, and processes today. That’s how agile we’ve been and how dramatically AIMCLEAR’s team has responded to the blitz of marketing evolutions. Every day we use tools that we wished could be built for years, screamed to life, and scaled agency-wide. We grow powerfully from month to month, remove blockers, invest, and train.
Our goal is to embody the “hybrid marketing engineer” across roles. When applied with skill, AI is transforming marketing and software development into an increasingly unified discipline, enabling our strategists to build production tools and engineers to execute sophisticated marketing work. AIMCLEAR’s approach focuses on measurement, workflows, applications, and discoveries in a shared intelligence layer, preserving institutional knowledge across teams and clients. As traditional professional boundaries converge, hybrid marketing engineers combine creativity, technical expertise, data architecture, and strategic thinking to solve complex business problems with unprecedented speed and breadth. I will keynote SMX Munich in April 2027 on this specific topic.
Back to last night in NYC: Lea and Tim representing at the US Search Awards. Here’s what keeps running through my mind.
I love our people who work so hard, long hours, overcoming challenges, demonstrating relentless curiosity, and delivering off-the-hook care behind campaigns. I’ve watched them challenge assumptions, invent new approaches, and dig into problems until something finally clicked. Seriously ya’ll, you’re among the best on the planet.
This is the hardware we took away last night:
🏆 Best Small Integrated Search Agency: AIMCLEAR, RE-Founded. Think about how dramatically search, data, paid media, social, and, for the last 5 years, AI have changed. I’m incredibly proud of our team’s ability to continually evolve, rigorously study, experiment, and execute remarkable work. 2026 is about a scrappy startup mindset, built on institutional wisdom and our CEO Laura Weintraub‘s steady leadership.
🏆 Best Integrated Campaign: AIMCLEAR & Lightspeed DMS. The project melds precision interdisciplinary work into a cohesive program, breaking down data silos, shared strategy, and prodigal business outcomes. This category is hard to win. The annual short-list is packed with A-listers, holding group-owned agencies, and notable brands. We’ve won it before. This one is sweeter.
🏆 Best Use of Search: Fashion: Our agency tackled technical SEO debt and AEO semantics. There’s some wonderfully nerdy search work behind this trophy. Working on the case study, Lea’s vision and execution blew us away.
The team we have today is the strongest, deepest, and most talented crew of our nearly 20 years in business. Everyone’s experience, <3, commitment, creativity, intelligence, and range are remarkable. To our team: I hope you understand how special you are to Laura and me. You are among the best in the world.
Thank you to Joe Thornton, Vice President of Strategic Communications & PR (led entry process for 10+ years), Lea Buckingham Scudamore, Director of SEO & AI Visibility, Timothy Halloran, VP, Marketing Intelligence. You all worked your butts off on these campaigns and building out case studies. Also, thanks to the rest of our leadership team (part of every case study in the shop) Laura Perttula, Zachary Good, Joe Warner, and Laura Weintraub. Kudos to Nicky Wake, Founder of the Don’t Panic Events (and breakout entrepreneur). I won’t list every teammate in this article, but please know, WE SEE YOU. Literally every person in the shop touched these case studies from mild to wild.
Our industry is again at a massive inflection point that surfaces innovators while filtering posers. Too many practitioners talk a good “AI game” while scratching around the edges. AIMCLEAR forges bold paths, challenges convention, turns tools upside down, upends how marketing gets done for the better – while tapping classic human marketing and branding acumen. We share knowledge generously across the marketingverse. The humans of AIMCLEAR flourish as future-proofed marketing leaders for 2027 and beyond.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m one very proud agency founder.
What a night. ❤️
