Underneath the sugarcoated veneer of the $15 billion North American confectionery market lurks a brutally discouraging nougat: a dependency on volatile commodities like cane, cocoa and peanuts, and a stubborn audience that doesn't like brands to change. So it comes as no surprise that top candy powerhouses such as The Hershey Company and Nestlé are among the Web's most sophisticated marketers, fluent not only in linear media, but in destination Web sites, data marketing, word-of-mouth and social advertising. Examples of groundbreaking next-generation candy campaigns abound - Cadbury's epic drum-playing gorilla garnered nearly five million views on YouTube, and Skittles' anarchic, …

Only a few years ago, Kenny Tomlin sat in a doctor's waiting room thumbing through a copy of Inc. with the magazine's notable "500" list. Rockfish was still just an idea in his head (Tomlin worked for Walmart at the time), but reading about the successful start-ups on the list, he knew where he wanted to be...on that list with Rockfish. Four years later when Tomlin picked up the latest installment of Inc.'s list, the company had made it.

At 360i it's all about following consumer behavior and supporting it with technology. The strategy organizes campaigns, giving clients a balanced online presence. Once called "search-informed marketing," John Ragals, 360i chief operating officer, says it's not about allowing markets to remain in a silo, but combining mobile, social and display to listen and hear the buzz across channels.

"I was sitting at home one weekend," says John Moore, chief media officer at Mullen's mediahub, "and I was thinking, 'What are the 35 or 40 media questions that I would ask or want insight to that MRI, Simmons, Nielsen and all these syndicated databases that we rely way too heavily on, don't answer?'"

"For us, 2010 was the year of integration," says PJ Pereira, co-founder and CCO, of Pereira and O'Dell. "Not that we ever had things too separate, because we were born from this idea of combining digital, advertising, design, PR - all under the same process."

As mobile marketing comes into its own in 2011, the most visible challenge will be bringing a highly fragmented, relentlessly evolving platform to some kind of practical scale. For an agency business already in flux, however, it is equally pressing that mobile learnings find their way across the organization to inform everyone - and in a hurry. For the second year in a row, we acknowledge Phonevalley's leadership role, not only in developing innovative, creative programs for clients like Bank of America, GM, L'Oreal, Nestlé and Kraft, but integrating and evangelizing the post-desktop future throughout Publicis' many components and markets. …

When Pepsi opted not to advertise in the Super Bowl in 2010 as opposed to years past, its absence ended up garnering more attention than its presence ever could have. There was also, in the absence, a large shadow. Or a HUGE shadow. Because, however coy Pepsi's team wanted to be about the lack of running Super Bowl spots not being a media push, it coincided with the launch of the Pepsi Refresh project, funneling $20 million toward it as a prize for an ongoing crowd-sourced award competition. And Brooklyn, NY-based HUGE led the effort online.

In the less than two years that Sapient has acquired the Nitro Group, the dynamic 20-year-old agency, now known as SapientNitro, has been reaping universal kudos from industry pundits. The praise has helped SapientNitro vault to No. 45 on Fortune Magazine's list of Fastest Growing Companies. As the $500 billion communication market relentlessly morphs under the technological and sociological climate of the times, SapientNitro is particularly well-positioned as an innovative leader.

2010 will go down as the year somebody got it right. By somebody we mean Wieden + Kennedy. And by got it right we mean a scalable two-way conversation, the unlimited promise of social media made real in the form of a man who might well now say: "I'm on a juggernaut."

There's something you may notice about OMMA's choice of Agency of the Year for 2010, Wieden + Kennedy. It's not what anyone would really refer to as a digital agency, and as such, it doesn't follow OMMA's history of selecting digital natives.