Three teams of students competing in the international Google Online Marketing Challenge won IMPAQT Innovation Awards on Wednesday night for local advertising efforts.

Jim Jansen, an information, sciences and technologies (IST) professor, evaluated how successfully the 16 teams' campaigns performed for the local awards. Jansen said team JAB, which placed first, was "super focused" and committed throughout the entire project.

The teams chose a local business to run actual marketing campaigns for display on Google. They assessed their results and submit reports to be judged by a panel of independent academics from all different countries, according to the competition's website.

The winning team advertised for Oakmont Bakery in Pittsburgh, Abby Schmelzer (senior-marketing), a member of the winning group, said. For the competition, each team receives $200 of free online advertising with Google AdWords, an advertising network that runs ads displayed to the right of search results on Google's site.

"Before this contest, when I would search stuff on Google, I would ignore those ads," Jackie Dunfee (junior-advertising), a member of the winning team, said.

Bill Nechamkin (junior-information sciences and technology) was the third member of the winning group. Schmelzer said she was glad to get the real world experience because it's one of the new technologies that is making advertising easier to manage.

The members of team JAB each won $150 in Amazon gift certificates for the local competition, sponsored by IMPAQT, a Pittsburgh company that specializes in search-specific online marketing. IMPAQT donated $1,000 to be split among the top three teams, including Team Awesome and Team Click Here.

Zach Simon, marketing coordinator for IMPAQT, said when one of Penn State's teams placed first three years ago, the company's owner took notice. Penn State is the only local school that offers a class like IST 402 (Emerging Issues and Technologies), a class that focuses on search advertising, he added. Last year, the competition had 2,187 teams of students from 57 countries. Fifteen Penn State teams entered the competition, all placing in the top 150 teams and three made it to the semi-finalist round which consisted of the top 15 teams.

The students compete in the contest as part of IST 402 curriculum, a class taught by Jansen.