Nev Hasan.
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By Nev Hasan, Chief Sales Officer, Foxtel Media
After another year of market headwinds, TV’s transformation has evolved from a theoretical conversation into commercial reality. The Australian advertising market has spent the past few years recalibrating. At the same time the definition of TV has evolved from linear to encompass streaming and premium video, brands and agencies have grappled with economic uncertainty, audience fragmentation, and the rise of digital performance channels.
The conversations we’re having with marketers are changing fundamentally but, at its heart the problem has remained constant. The question that matters most to advertisers is still: “what did I get for my spend?”
For decades, TV has been sold on audience delivery. The size of the crowd was the determinant of value and ultimately, the currency we traded on. In 2026, reach alone won’t be enough to justify spend. Media has fragmented, causing audiences to shift. Thanks to this increasingly complexity, the rules are changing.
The demand for outcome measurement will increasingly reshape how all forms of TV is packaged, priced, and valued. There is shift underway, from “we reached a million viewers” or “we delivered a million impressions” to “we delivered a 20% lift in consideration and 8,000 new customers.” This not about abandoning the mass-reach advantage of TV, it’s about connecting that scale to outcomes that matter to marketers.
Nowhere is the shift to outcome metrics more exciting than in sport sponsorship, which looks to be the last bastion of not just live scaled reach but high levels of audience engagement. Historically, sponsorship was about alignment. It meant associating the clients brand with a show, network or moment. This was often measured in logo placements and media value equivalents.
Today, sponsorships are being re-engineered for outcomes. We’re seeing brands tie integrations directly to measurable KPIs, site-traffic during an episode, incremental sales during a sponsorship window or shifts in brand perception post-campaign. The creative partnership remains vital, but the metrics have matured.
For marketers, it’s no longer just about “owning a moment” but proving what that moment delivers. For broadcasters, it’s a chance to re-value the unique role of premium content not just as exposure, but as an engine of influence and conversion.
In this new economy, networks are no longer just media owners, they’re marketing partners.
As the eco-system evolves, the biggest challenge for TV isn’t relevance, it’s complexity. Buying television can sometimes feel like a bespoke art-form. There are dozens of products, formats, and integrations to choose from, each with their own data sets, measurement rules and pricing models.
A recent Avid Collective survey of media buyers found that agencies are struggling to work with media partners due to disconnected systems and inconsistent processes. A whopping 79% of respondents said that manual workflows for briefing, approvals, delivery, and reporting make it harder to produce high-quality, effective campaigns.
This isn’t good enough. It’s time for TV to play the same game that digital platforms have done for years. TV Advertising’s next wave of growth depends on simplification and productisation.
To achieve this, an industry-wide evolution is required.
This means broadcasters rethinking how they report and share data, working hand-in-hand with agencies (and each other). It also means innovating, to take advantage of advances in technology to better track audience behaviour. Finally, it means developing clear, outcomes-based products that make TV (linear, streaming and premium video) easier to understand, compare and trade.
In 2026 we will see this start to happen as outcome-based trading for TV begin to emerge. In practice, this means a shift from buying impressions to buying results: from a cost-per-completed-view to a cost-per-visit or cost-per-action. The metrics differ from category to category, but the principle will remain. Advertisers will pay for the business results not audience delivery.
Ratings will still matter, but they’ll no longer be the headline act and will just be a number if they drove no impact. The new currency will be outcomes. Brands will want to see the metrics that prove their campaigns have driven brand lift, increased website traffic, delivered store visits or secured more sales.
For broadcasters, the move to outcomes will be an opportunity to prove the undeniable power TV. We know (and research has shown) that premium video is the foundation for the most engaged audiences and the most impactful advertising. Now we just need to work together as an industry to translate this and show brands and agencies exactly how TV is driving business results, but in a simplified way as possible, otherwise we’ll just repeat history and make it all too hard.
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