Agencies, smothered in duplicated spreadsheets and endless emails, say working with media partners has become too hard, according to a survey from Avid Collective.
Disconnected systems and inconsistent ways of working are limiting their ability to deliver campaigns effectively, they say.
The media agencies want one unified platform to reduce friction.
Avid's Industry Survey on Media Partnerships finds the current ecosystem is too complex and inefficient, making campaigns overly resource-intensive to deliver at scale.
"We wanted to move beyond qualitative discussions and capture tangible data points from the people navigating these challenges every day to be able to share with the industry," said Luke Spano, founder and CEO of Avid Collective.
“The results of our survey highlight just how much time, energy, and creativity are being lost to complexity.
"The way the category works together hasn't evolved, still living in spreadsheets and emails, and that's holding everyone back - especially the brands that want to stand out and grow with impactful media partnerships."
When asked if a lack of consistency across processes, language and measurement makes it less efficient to work with publishers and media partners, 90% of agency respondents agreed.
Everyone's unique ways of working, once seen as differentiation, are now driving fragmentation and complexity.
Agencies spend hours comparing offerings and responses and translating differing languages instead of focusing on strategy and storytelling.
Seventy-nine per cent of respondents agreed that manual workflows across briefing, approvals, campaign delivery and reporting limit their ability to deliver higher-quality, more impactful work.
From endless email threads to duplicated spreadsheets, the process has become a bottleneck. This slows delivery for media owners, drains strategic and creative time for agencies, and limits opportunities for brands to shift spend from the big tech platforms into premium environments.
When asked if a single, easy-to-use platform where agencies, publishers and media partners could brief, deliver and report on campaigns in one place would reduce friction, 88% agreed.
"This is a problem the entire industry needs to solve together," said Spano.
"If we want to win market share back from the big tech platforms, we can't do it in silos."
The findings are based on Avid's survey conducted nationally in October. The survey was distributed to media agency professionals across Australia and received 260 responses.
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