Anna Elema wins CampaignUS Media Planner of the Year Award
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
The Exverus by Brainlabs Media Director earned the prestigious industry title of 2026 for her work on TV show "The Chosen".
MARCH 26, 2026 (LOS ANGELES) -- CampaignUS magazine has awarded Anna Elema the prestigious title of Media Planner/Buyer of the Year 2026 for her work at Exverus leading media strategy for TV's "The Chosen." The trade publication's annual Agency of the Year Awards recognize excellence in marketing, advertising, and paid media strategies for brands large and small. See all the 2026 winners here.
As one of Exverus' four original employees, Anna has been loyally smashing campaign goals for over 11 years, putting together full-funnel media plans for brands as varied as "The Chosen", Stella & Chewy's pet food, MasterClass, and Premier Boxing Champions. She has served as a mentor and role model for her direct reports along the way. Anna follows in the footsteps of Exverus VP Tasha Day, who earned the same title in 2023.
CampaignUS writes:
As lead media planner for The Chosen, Elema's team faced an unusual
challenge: bringing a streaming-native series to movie theaters for its Season 5
finale. The multi-platform campaign spanned YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix,
TikTok, Snapchat AR lenses and massive out-of-home placements including a
Times Square takeover. The results exceeded every benchmark. Non-viewer
awareness jumped 44% to reach 72%, aided awareness hit 4.6 times
entertainment category norms and video completion rates reached 98.6%. The
campaign sold 6.1 million tickets and grossed $50 million at the box office,
earning coverage from Variety, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy
Fallon and The View.
Elema then turned to the show's merchandise operation, tasked with hitting $50
million in sales on 37% less media spend than the prior year. By building a
media mix across video, social commerce and search that pulled double duty on
brand awareness and direct sales, her strategy delivered an $11.90 return on ad
spend from Amazon in the first half alone.
An Exverus founding team member who has watched the agency grow from four people to over 50, Elema's path from fashion modeling in Paris to media psychology studies in the Netherlands to over a decade in LA media planning gives her a perspective most planners simply can't replicate.
Anna leads her teams with the same core values that make Exverus by Brainlabs an outstanding independent agency: truth, passion, service, and creativity. She makes every new Exverian feel welcome and included; whether in the office in Los Angeles or while working remotely from the Netherlands for a month every year. She encourages her direct-reports to take the time they need, and she embraces new ad-tech offerings with a sharp eye for client opportunity.
Throughout her decade at Exverus, Anna has mastered the cosmic shifts in media buying, from the rise of retail media to in-house programmatic trading, AI search, and many more. She is known for building out creative media campaigns with fresh ideas that go beyond the basics and leverage midsized budgets for outsized impact. There’s a reason Anna’s campaigns keep winning the top industry awards – they prove that originality and technical precision are the magic ingredients for media excellence, today and tomorrow.
"Anna does an amazing job at listening to our vision and needs and turning it into a world-class campaign that drives results. The Exverus team is an active partner with us, not only planning and executing the campaign, but also making real-time optimizations based on what they are seeing. They do not ‘set it and forget it’ – they are a close partner truly obsessed with our success.” - Andrew Young, Head of Global Advertising & Insights for "The Chosen"
More examples of Anna Elema's effective media campaigns
'The Chosen App: Download Your Calling' wins the 2024 MediaPost OMMA for Best Mobile Marketing Campaign
'Stella & Chewy's: America's Next Top Petfluencer' wins the 2024 Adweek Media Plan of the Year Award for Best Use of Mobile Media
Adweek. This Interactive Ad Format Helped Stella & Chewy's Reach Pet Parents. Nov 2023.
Areas of Anna Elema's expertise as a media planner & buyer
Ready to build a full-funnel media strategy that delivers results? At Exverus by Brainlabs, we combine strategic planning, data-driven optimization, and cross-channel expertise to help brands navigate the complexity of modern media. Let's talk!