News Australia breaks up the upfront as marketers 'move at different speeds'

News Australia is rethinking the traditional one-size-fits-all upfront, replacing a single broad market presentation with five category-specific sessions designed around the different pressures facing marketers heading into 2027.

The Beyond’27 series begins this week and will bring marketers into News Australia’s Sydney headquarters across sessions covering advocacy and reputation, health and beauty, sport and entertainment, travel and financial and essential services.

Behind the format change is a fairly straightforward argument: consumer behaviour is fragmenting too quickly and unevenly for one annual presentation about “the consumer” to be particularly useful.

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said the forces changing consumer behaviour were neither moving at the same speed nor in the same direction across categories.

“Marketers deserve more than a one-size-fits-all view of what is coming,” Miller said.

“Beyond’27 is our commitment to going deeper by bringing the intelligence, the evidence and the thinking that helps our partners make better decisions in an uncertain market.”

Each session will move from consumer insight into category-specific analysis before, unsurprisingly, arriving at News Australia’s own commercial proposition.

But the issues being put on the table give a useful read on where the publisher believes marketer anxiety is heading.

For advocacy and reputation, the focus is misinformation and the growing business importance of advocacy.

Health, wellness and beauty will examine the flood of conflicting online advice and whether brands need to shift from promises of transformation towards more practical daily support.

The sport and entertainment session will look beyond the live event towards the stories, rituals and communities that surround fandom, while travel will tackle the impact of AI on the traditional consumer journey and the growing importance of trust.

Finance and essential services will focus on the limits of price-led retention, arguing brands need to build trust well before customers reach the point of comparing providers.

News Australia chief revenue officer Lou Barrett said each session starts with one question: what marketers in that category need to know to grow.

“We are not here to tell people what they want to hear,” Barrett said. “We’re going to give them the sharpest possible read on where their consumer is heading and to show them exactly how News Australia's audience, data and content capabilities can help them get there.”

The approach also reflects a broader problem with the traditional upfront model.

Annual showcases were built around a relatively predictable planning calendar, with major media owners assembling hundreds of buyers and marketers to unveil programming, products, data and commercial packages in one hit.

Beyond’27 effectively concedes that marketers are no longer necessarily operating on the same timetable or dealing with the same problems.

Rather than one big prediction about where the market is going, News Australia is betting there is more value in going narrower and deeper.

The five sessions run from September 2 to September 10.