WeGrow, a consultancy that partners with agencies, media owners and their clients, has released a new study, the ‘Publisher Pulse Survey,’ revealing critical gaps in agency-publisher relationships.
Just 3 per cent of publishers agree that agencies fully maximise the value and partnership potential from sell-side partners, highlighting the opportunities for improvement in agency-publisher relationships.
The WeGrow Publisher Pulse Survey provided a platform for Australian media companies to share unfiltered feedback about their agency relationships. Participating publishers include Seven Network, Nine Network, Network Ten, SBS, ARN, SCA, Nova, News Corp, oOh!media, JCDecaux, QMS, Val Morgan, and MiQ.
Getting the best out of sell-side partners requires more than simply “being a good human and hoping everything will fall into place.” The survey reveals a clear divide: while some agencies have developed focused strategies for managing their sell-side partnerships, others need a cultural shift and comprehensive strategy that addresses both behavioural and process improvements.
The survey, conducted in August-September 2025 with 435 respondents across all levels of sell-side seniority, revealed more than 3,500 comments outlining publishers’ experience with agencies. The study follows WeGrow’s Agency Pulse survey conducted last November, where agencies gave feedback on publishers.
The pace and pressure facing agencies creates friction as they juggle competing demands and constantly triage priorities. In this context, ways of working with publishers can be an inevitable casualty, and this was a clear outcome from the survey.
“Our Agency Pulse survey found that so many agencies are now time poor, they require media salespeople to show up prepared, curious, and with responses tailored and on point,” WeGrow founder, Wendy Gower, said.
“Through the work I do, and the surveys conducted, I now have a really unique lens on the success markers of agency and publisher relationships – that are all structurally unstable,” Gower added.
The survey revealed that fundamental communication principles need to be reset across some agencies. One Victorian general sales manager highlighted the attributes of one agency simply because they “don’t yell at you”, while more than 10 per cent of all comments outlined persistent issues with accessibility and responsiveness as a key tension point.
Communication emerged as the critical success factor, with feedback nominated as the most important criteria across all respondents, with 52 per cent selecting the ability to provide feedback as a top three characteristic of agencies that work best with their organisations, as well as briefing and transparency.
“Provide feedback when asked for. If the client is still deciding, tell the media owner instead of silence. If the client has gone a different route or with a different provider, tell the media owners instead of silence. If the media owners challenge the decision, provide constructive feedback on ‘why’ they didn’t win the business over the other provider instead of silence,” a survey respondent said.
Specific agencies were referenced more than 400 times throughout the survey, in response to what agencies do well – such as providing feedback, being transparent and briefing well.
“The findings also suggest a significant competitive advantage for agencies that focus time and effort in tackling the most pressing complaints and building an informed roadmap for collective success. Agencies are acutely aware that ways of working with publishers can be casualties of this ‘busyness’, deprioritised to meet more immediate commercial pressures and demands from clients and teams. The findings of this survey reveal a roadmap to improvement,” Gower said.
“Agencies that prioritise publisher relationships; by doing more than meeting the basics in collaboration, feedback, briefing, responsiveness, and transparency, will secure a disproportionate share of energy and opportunity from their partners. This can make a substantive difference to the campaign outcomes for an agency’s clients.
”Publishers are also often discreet advocates or detractors for clients in new business pitches, so harnessing these insights could be lucrative for agencies – not just to extract maximum value from the day to day and in turn for client campaign outcomes – but potentially more significantly in driving new business opportunities.
“While there are existing feedback mechanisms in the market that are excellent, none offer publishers a platform to share their completely unfiltered views. The more than 3,500 associated comments paint an informative picture of both the challenges and the opportunities,” Gower added.
“Partnerships are built through positive shared experience, and great partnerships deliver great work. In any partnership, taking time to pause, reflect and share feedback on what’s really working and what isn’t makes good business sense. The WeGrow Publisher Pulse has provided a platform for media owners to do just that,” Mark Fairhurst, chief revenue officer, oOh!media said.
“The WeGrow Publisher Pulse survey is an invaluable temperature check on how media owners are feeling about their interactions with agencies and the areas that could be improved to drive greater collaboration,” Nikki Rooke, national sales director, Total Television, Nine added.
