BERGEN, Norway – Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Sri Lanka, Brazil… PlugRush’s widget design contest attracted 300 entries from every corner of the Earth. From those, 10 winners took home a combined total of $2,500 in cash.

Bulgarian Aleksander received the top prize of $1,000. Gokhan from Turkey, in second place, received $500, and Albert from Romania won $300 for his third-place project. A complete list of winners is available on the PlugRush blog.

“It looks like we have winners from all around the world,” said PlugRush Chief Brand Officer Thomas Skavhellen. “From Bulgaria to Mexico, Sri Lanka to Brazil, and all over [Europe] — especially in Germany and the Netherlands — we’ve got them all covered. This really illustrates the wide variety of our publishers and that our traffic is truly global.”

PlugRush, which one the 2015 YNOT Award for Best Emerging Brand, hosted the widget design contest as a fun way to help publishers grow more familiar with the company’s recently launched Widget Creator tool.  The contest also helped PlugRush increase the number of interesting templates available through the tool.

“We consider this contest to be a huge success,” Skavhellen said. “The winners have done a really good job in trying to make ads look like content on their websites. Since we received so many great submissions and ideas, selecting the winners required a lot of consideration from our team.”

Winners were selected based on skillfully they designed ad widgets that integrate seamlessly with websites while appearing to be natural content. Designs of that type fit best with PlugRush’s approach to traffic, which focuses on native ads that encourage more clicks while also directing traffic based on user content preferences.

“From everyone on the PlugRush team, a sincere congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to everyone who participated,” Skavhellen said.

For more information about PlugRush, or to set up a free account, visit PlugRush.com.