AY's Best of Arkansas: How Voting Works & How to Win

AY's Best runs as a magazine ballot, and that changes who actually gets nominated

aymag.com/ays-best-of-2025/. That single URL is where AY Magazine, the glossy statewide lifestyle title also known as AY About You, runs its annual Best of Arkansas program. Unlike a metro daily's readers poll built around one newspaper's circulation area, this ballot draws nominees from across the whole state, one AY Magazine itself frames against a small-business base of more than 280,000.

That statewide scope matters for anyone deciding whether entering is worth the effort. A florist in Bentonville and a legal practice in Pine Bluff can land on the same category page, competing for the same five finalist slots, with zip code deciding none of it.

What AY Magazine hasn't put in writing: an exact per-day vote cap, or whether the nomination and voting windows shift by more than a few days from one year to the next. Treat aymag.com itself as the authority on that cycle's live rules rather than assuming last year's calendar repeats exactly. For Arkansas's other statewide business ballot, the Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas guide covers a separate, alt-weekly-run program with its own mechanics.

What the finalists page actually confirms, and what it leaves out

aymag.com/ays-best-of-2025-the-finalists/ is the second confirmed URL in this program's public record, published once nomination closes. It lists five finalists in each category, narrowing a statewide nomination pool down to a short list before the vote itself opens.

Why the finalist cut matters more than the nomination count

A business that clears nomination but doesn't make the finalists page is out of the running before voting starts. That's a real filter, not a formality. It means a "we're nominated" announcement is a weaker claim than "we're a finalist," a distinction worth keeping straight in any campaign message sent to customers.

Medical professionals, restaurants, florists, legal services, and wellness are the category types this page can name with confidence, spanning both healthcare-adjacent and retail-style businesses on the same statewide ballot. AY Magazine appears to run considerably more categories than that short list; a business should check the current aymag.com category index directly rather than assume its field has no home on the page.

No public vote totals or named recent winners for a specific year sit in the confirmed record either. AY Magazine did confirm the program's continuation with a 2026-cycle page at aymag.com/ays-best-of-2026-the-moment/, useful for knowing the program stayed active, though it doesn't by itself supply category-by-category results.

Two windows, roughly a month apart: nominate in January, vote from February 24 through March 24

Nomination opens in January. Voting doesn't start until February 24 and runs through March 24, a gap of several weeks that separates "getting on the ballot" from "getting votes" far more sharply than a single-phase contest does.

That gap changes campaign timing. A business that only starts asking customers to vote once the finalists page goes live has already missed the phase that decided whether it would appear on that page at all. The two windows need two different messages: one asking for a nomination in January, a second, later message asking for a vote once finalists are set.

Confirm the live dates each cycle rather than reusing this year's calendar. AY Magazine hasn't stated a reason the windows would shift, but a business planning outreach around a specific week should still check aymag.com directly before locking a schedule.

Arkansas runs a second, differently structured statewide business ballot in the same media landscape. The ArkansasOnline Best of the Best guide covers the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's version, worth a look for a business weighing whether to enter one program, both, or neither this year.

Five confirmed categories, a much larger field implied: medical offices, restaurants, florists, legal practices, wellness

Medical professionals. Restaurants. Florists. Legal services. Wellness. Those five category types sit in the confirmed record for this program, and together they say something about how broad AY's Best actually runs: a dermatology practice, a barbecue joint, a flower shop, a family law office, and a yoga studio can all be finalists in the same statewide cycle.

That spread is the point of a magazine-run best-of over a single-category poll. AY Magazine frames its readership against a state with more than 280,000 small businesses, and a program covering only restaurants would reach a fraction of that audience. Five confirmed category types, almost certainly not the full list, is already evidence the ballot is built to touch most of a household's regular spending, not just where it eats out.

For a restaurant weighing whether the Food category is worth the nomination effort, the restaurant vote campaign guide covers pacing reminders that apply to a finalist-stage push like this one. For a medical practice, legal office, or florist, the broader award-style vote campaign guide is the more relevant read, since those categories don't have a dedicated resource of their own here.

Running a legitimate AY's Best campaign without overstating a finalist spot

A finalist listing is real and checkable against aymag.com/ays-best-of-2025-the-finalists/, or whichever year's version is currently live. A bare claim of "Arkansas's best" with no year or category attached isn't something the confirmed record supports, and it risks stating more than AY Magazine has actually published about that business.

Real customers, asked directly to vote for a specific finalist listing during the February 24 to March 24 window, are the turnout this program's structure actually rewards. Fake accounts or automated tools would put a legitimate finalist placement at risk in a program run by a magazine with an ongoing readership relationship to protect. Arkansas's business community, spread from Bentonville to Pine Bluff, is small enough that an inflated claim tends to get noticed by the same people a business is trying to win over.

How online contest votes work covers the general playbook a legitimate push like this follows, and is buying votes legal is the legal question worth settling before any budget goes toward a campaign tied to a named finalist spot. Arkansas also runs statewide high school fan-vote polls with a completely different mechanic and audience, covered on the Arkansas High School Athlete of the Week guide and the Boys Basketball Player of the Week guide, worth a look only to see how different a business ballot is from a school-sport one.