By Sophie Miura, General Manager eCommerce, News Corp Australia
EOFY 2026 is shaping up as one of the biggest sales events of the year, with new research from Paypal showing 71% of Australians plan to shop the sales. But while consumer demand remains strong, the path to purchase is becoming harder to shape and measure.
The problem isn’t necessarily demand. It’s that the infrastructure brands have relied on for years is fragmenting faster than most marketing strategies can accommodate.
EOFY this year isn’t an evolution of the 2025 event; it is a structurally different retail moment that requires a new playbook.
The linear path to purchase is dead
The consumer journey used to be clear: search, assess, click, buy. That model is now an oversimplification.
Today’s purchase decision is assembled across a constellation of touchpoints: A TikTok video that sparks a prompt in ChatGPT, validated by a review from a trusted source, and finally executed on a retailer’s site or app.
Research indicates 81% of consumers actively comparison shop before committing, and 73% delay purchases specifically to wait for sale events (Australia Post eCommerce Report, 2026). These shoppers aren’t lacking intent; they’re highly motivated but highly mobile, navigating a fragmented discovery journey that’s increasingly difficult for brands to track and influence.
That complexity is amplified by AI-powered discovery. When consumers ask an LLM for product recommendations, they’re outsourcing the decision to a system that synthesises authority at scale.
Which brands surface in those responses is not simply a function of ad spend. It is a function of editorial credibility, structured content, and citation depth across trusted sources. Most brands have no visibility into whether they are winning or losing in this environment. Many don’t yet know they’re playing.
The new evaluation criteria for content partnerships
This shift has a direct implication for how brands should allocate EOFY spend and, more specifically, how they should evaluate the partners they work with.
The legacy criteria, reach, click-through rates, and conversion rates, remain absolutely relevant but in isolation are insufficient. Instead, brands that have evolved to meet this moment assess based on an expanded set:
Ecosystem footprint. Does your partner’s content travel with the consumer across the consideration journey? A publisher with presence across search, social, newsletters, and increasingly LLM citation is guiding discovery and conversion wherever it happens.
Category authority. Demonstrated expertise, consistent coverage depth and the kind of reader trust that causes consumers to act on recommendations.
Owned audience depth. Can the media partner activate engaged audiences when EOFY conversion peaks? Publishers with loyal, direct relationships through homepages, apps and newsletters deliver performance without relying on shifting algorithms.
What this means for EOFY and beyond
The brands best positioned to win this year are not necessarily those with the largest budgets. They are those whose partner selection reflects the actual complexity of the consumer decision journey, who have invested in relationships with publishers that carry category authority, who show up across the full discovery ecosystem and who have the owned audience depth to activate when it counts.
The question to ask is not “how much reach does this buy?” but rather, “does this partner have the authority, the footprint, and the activation capability to reach a consumer across multiple touchpoints?”
The brands asking that question are the ones who will thrive in this new landscape. The rest are optimising for a path to purchase that fewer consumers are taking every year.