Over the last three years ‘collaboration’ has been a central and recurring theme at The Future of TV. Seven, Nine, Ten, Foxtel and to a lesser extent SBS have been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism, including from me. But whose role is it to create a view of a complicated and ever-changing landscape?

OMG’s view after the market developments of the last 12 months is that it’s us, the agency.

It’s an agency’s role through deep partnerships with all the vendors, a large resource of functional specialists across media, data and software resources combined with the agility and willingness to invest in new products, in the service of our clients, that deliver the solutions brands need in a complicated linear and connected TV ecosystem.

Last year four events occurred:

1. Foxtel launched its own measurement system 
2. TV Networks launched their new unified VOZ measurement
3. Video spend including BVOD, SVOD and via TV manufactures grew quickly 
4. Continued growth of multinational platforms like Google and Meta

The growth in video spends signals sell-side collaboration is not a prerequisite for growth as a more competitive fragmented market delivered strong revenue in a flat ad market.

Foxtel separating from OzTAM had no significant issues for brands or Foxtel. Again, sell-side collaboration was missing and everything still worked.

VOZ launched after years of investment by the TV networks and major agency groups. It is of note this long-delayed launch happened as the market suddenly became more competitive with Foxtel leaving and SVOD growth.

Multinational platform publishers like Google and Meta continued to grow well ahead of the market with no sign of sell-side collaboration or calls by the industry to do more to work together.

Coming into this year’s Future of TV there are the same calls for the TV networks, Foxtel and to a lesser degree the SVOD players to collaborate, mainly from agencies. But the market signals point to competition, not collaboration, driving innovation and opportunities for brands with connected TV revenue growing strongly.

This is also not an Australian issue but one playing out globally. OMG along with the other major global agency groups can inform its staff and clients about how multi-currency markets like the US and UK are evolving. In short agile groups of likeminded vendors, agencies and brands are collaborating in different groups, constantly. Competition has the momentum and is creating innovative opportunities – not blanket calls for sell-side collaboration.

Like all the other large holding groups, we invested our technical specialists and senior leadership time in VOZ via the MFA, for the benefit for the entire industry.

But at the same time, like most of the other major networks, we have built proprietary tech and tools that enable planning across TV in all its forms based on data from each of the networks, ad-funded streamers and TV manufacturers, as well as OzTAM and Kantar.

In other words, the collaborative outcome the industry is demanding from TV networks has already been delivered.

While we applaud moves to de-duplicate back-end costs, we don’t think the TV networks need to be pushed to invest more and more in the name of collaboration, an idea that agencies and the buy-side is applying in a haphazard and sometimes unfair way to the sell-side.

In a competitive environment, creating advanced solutions that simplify delivery of a client’s brand goals is an agency’s job, letting the sell-side get on with their role to create engaged high value audiences and advertising experiences for brands to connect with through high-quality content, technology, data and sales solutions.

The Future of TV will serve brands better if agencies hold themselves accountable for their role – and let the sell-side focus on theirs.

* This story is part of Mi3’s full collection of industry trends, debate and developments from Future of TV Advertising ’25 which will roll out over the coming week in our editorial series here.