While the Upfront is primarily about the programs and events coming to SBS in 2027, the broadcaster has also put considerable focus on how it can help brands reach, understand and engage its audiences — and how those campaigns can extend beyond SBS itself.
The announcements point to SBS giving advertisers more ways to connect with the audiences built around its content, both on and beyond its own platforms.
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SBS puts outcomes at the centre of its advertising pitch
One of the biggest developments is the launch of new outcomes-based measurement capabilities through SBS Data Lab, with partnerships including CommBank iQ and HYP.
The offering is designed to move beyond traditional audience measurement by allowing eligible advertisers to connect SBS campaign exposure with aggregated consumer behaviour, including spending, website visits, physical visitation and customer growth.
SBS Data Lab is expanding its outcomes-based measurement capabilities through new partnerships with CommBank iQ and HYP (image – SBS)
Through CommBank iQ, SBS will have access to spending insights, category and brand intelligence and more than 500 spend-based audience segments, while HYP will provide behavioural targeting and measurement capabilities across SBS environments.
The new partnerships build on SBS’s existing work with Adobe, Snowflake and InfoSum, as well as brand-lift measurement partnerships with Attest, Kantar and McNair.
SBS is also using existing campaigns to demonstrate what the approach can deliver, including a Rexona campaign around its FIFA sponsorship which, when combined with in-store activity, recorded a reported 186% uplift in sales.
The aim is to give advertisers a clearer picture of not just who saw their campaigns, but what happened afterwards.
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Taking SBS campaigns beyond SBS
SBS is also expanding the places where advertisers can take an idea built around the broadcaster’s content.
A new partnership with oOh!media will allow brands associated with major SBS properties to extend campaigns into out-of-home environments, with dedicated packages already planned around SBS’s 2027 Tour de France coverage.
The broadcaster is also partnering with creator marketing platform Fabulate, giving advertisers access to its network of Australian creators to extend SBS campaigns into TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other creator-led environments.
A third partnership with Multicultural Outdoor will allow campaigns to move into retail environments serving multicultural communities, combining SBS CulturalConnect’s audience insights and multilingual capabilities with MCO’s digital outdoor network.
SBS says the partnerships are designed to take a single creative idea “from couch to community to counter”, extending campaigns across outdoor, creator and retail environments.
The approach follows SBS’s broader push to help advertisers connect with increasingly fragmented audiences around major cultural and sporting moments.
Selling SBS’s understanding of Australia
Another part of the commercial offering is focused less on where SBS can put an advertisement and more on the information it can provide about the people advertisers are trying to reach.
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SBS has unveiled new research into what it calls “The Booster Economy”, examining the growing amount of spending by parents and grandparents on their adult children and grandchildren.
The research estimates that more than $140 billion a year is being transferred through “everyday inheritances”, covering everything from groceries, travel and clothing to cars, appliances and education.
The study found more than 12 million Australians provide some form of support to younger adult family members, with SBS arguing the findings challenge the traditional focus on 25-54-year-olds when considering who is influencing purchasing decisions.
The research adds to SBS CulturalConnect’s wider thought leadership work, which includes What Australia Means to Me and research into multicultural consumers and their needs.
The SBS Census Explorer will return in 2027 with data from the 2026 Census (image – SBS)
That audience focus will also feed into the return of the SBS Census Explorer in 2027, following the release of the latest Census data.
The free tool will be updated with 2026 Census information, allowing marketers and other organisations to explore Australia’s changing communities, including language, ancestry, gender and geographic demographics.
The new SBS Census Explorer is scheduled to launch in June 2027, with updates to coincide with the release of the latest Census data.
A bigger sustainability play
SBS is also expanding its Sustainability Challenge, with Guardian Australia joining the initiative for 2027.
The partnership will increase the advertising inventory available to the winning campaign to $700,000 across television and digital, giving brands an opportunity to develop sustainability-focused campaigns with the backing of both media organisations.
MobileMuster won the 2026 SBS Sustainability Challenge with a campaign encouraging Australians to recycle unused mobile phones (image – SBS)
The 2026 challenge was won by MobileMuster for a campaign encouraging Australians to recycle unused mobile phones, with the Australian Museum’s FrogID project receiving a highly commended recognition.
The initiative gives SBS another purpose-led commercial opportunity, linking advertising inventory with campaigns focused on sustainability and behaviour change.
First Nations media gets a major brand commitment
Ahead of today’s Upfront, SBS and NITV also announced a new two-year partnership with Optus under the Beyond 3% initiative.
Optus has committed 3% of its consumer brand spend to First Nations media over the next two years, with the partnership including initiatives focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.
The deal will see Optus work with NITV on initiatives including “Speaking Country, Word of the Week”, while major brands including NRMA Insurance, Coles, AAMI and Amazon are also being showcased as supporters of Beyond 3%.
The partnership adds another example of SBS using its cultural expertise and access to specific audiences as part of its commercial offering.
And SBS News is heading beyond the screen
SBS News will also appear across oOh!media’s out-of-home network under a new exclusive content partnership.
The deal will put SBS News content across more than 6300 lift and lobby screens, as well as airport terminals and universities, with SBS estimating the partnership could reach more than 10.6 million people over 12 months.
While the deal is primarily about extending the reach of SBS News rather than creating a new advertising product, it fits with the broader push to put SBS content in front of audiences in more places.
SBS content remains the starting point
Taken together, the announcements give a clearer picture of the commercial story sitting alongside SBS’s 2027 programming slate.
The broadcaster is offering advertisers more ways to extend campaigns beyond SBS, more data to understand its audiences and more measurement to demonstrate campaign outcomes — while continuing to build commercial opportunities around its cultural and audience expertise.
For advertisers, the content remains the starting point, but SBS is now offering more ways to take those audiences from the screen into the wider community.ant complement to SBS’s 2027 programming slate: the content gets audiences through the door, while SBS is building more ways for advertisers to follow them beyond it.
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