Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 08.04.2026 
To paraphrase the late American anthropologist, Margaret Mead: never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people. Clean Digital may be a small agency based in sunny Leith, Edinburgh, but we’re also a team of dynamic, innovative, thought leaders with ambitious goals, genuine passion, and an impressive portfolio of challenger brands, both nationally and internationally.
We’re extremely proud to be named a finalist in the Global Agency Awards 2026. This recognition is evidence that technical innovation isn’t reserved for Silicon Valley giants or network agencies with massive headcounts. It proves that with the right expertise and a culture of curiosity, a small team can engineer solutions that stand out on a global scale.
We’ve been nominated in the “Best Use of AI in a Client Campaign” category for our work with Arden University. Our relationship with Arden University spans nearly a decade, a partnership that is really important to us. Arden is an incredibly forward-thinking partner that has consistently empowered us to push the boundaries of what’s possible. This nomination is not just a celebration of our team’s innovation, but also of our longstanding partnership with Arden University.
Arden’s account is complex. Managing 285 active campaigns across diverse international markets created a massive operational bottleneck: relevancy. To capture the volume required for their 2025 intake targets, we leaned heavily into Google’s AI Max and Broad Match strategies. However, “Broad Match” can be a double-edged sword; it often matched specific course keywords to irrelevant, high-funnel terms like “university jobs” instead of “university degrees.”
Our specialists were spending over 20 hours a week manually policing thousands of daily search queries. We knew there had to be a better way to scale without losing control.
The solution came from the sheer brilliance of our Head of Data & Analytics, Aitor Larrañaga, who spearheaded the development of our proprietary Vector Classification Intent-Engine. Rather than relying on outdated scripts that only catch typos, Aitor’s engine uses LLM embeddings to understand the actual meaning behind a search. By converting queries into mathematical vectors, the system recognises that ‘tertiary education’ and ‘degree’ are synonymous, despite sharing no common letters.
This wasn’t just about adopting a third-party tool; it was about engineering a bespoke backend solution from our office in Leith. By implementing a ‘Confidence Score’ and hybrid search guardrails, we successfully automated the ‘mental exhaustion’ of query analysis. This innovation hasn’t just improved performance; it has reclaimed vital time for our specialists to reinvest back into high-level strategy and creative optimisation.
Being shortlisted on a global stage is a monumental moment for everyone at Clean Digital. In an industry where “AI” is often just a buzzword for generative copy or imagery, this nomination validates our commitment to solving deep structural problems with technical architecture.
“Seeing our work alongside the world’s biggest agencies is a real ‘pinch-me’ moment,” says Rory Young, CEO. “It’s a testament to our ‘small but mighty’ philosophy. We don’t just want to follow industry trends; we want to build the tools that set them. Reclaiming 20 hours of manual work a week for our account managers hasn’t just improved performance – it’s improved our team’s quality of life, allowing them to focus on high-level strategy and creative optimisation.”
For us, this award entry represents the perfect coupling of human intuition and machine precision. It proves that a small agency in Edinburgh can compete on the world stage by staying agile, staying curious, and never being afraid to build something from scratch.
As we head toward the awards outcome, we are incredibly grateful to our partners at Arden University for trusting us to innovate on such a significant scale. Regardless of the final result, being named a finalist is a win for the Edinburgh tech scene and for small agencies everywhere who are punching well above their weight.
