SBS is widening the scope of its advertising business beyond traditional television, and creators are becoming a much bigger part of that strategy. The Australian broadcaster has announced new partnerships covering the creator economy, outdoor advertising and multicultural retail, including the SBS Fabulate creator economy partnership, giving marketers more ways to extend campaigns beyond a single screen.
The move includes partnerships with creator marketing platform Fabulate, out-of-home media company oOh!media and multicultural retail network Multicultural Outdoor. Together, the partnerships are designed to help advertisers take campaigns built around SBS programming and extend them into social platforms, public spaces and retail environments.
SBS Pushes Further Into the Creator Economy
The partnership with Fabulate is one of the most notable parts of SBS’s new advertising strategy. From 2027, advertisers working with SBS will be able to connect campaigns with a large network of Australian creators. The idea is straightforward: a campaign that begins around television programming, entertainment or sport does not have to stop when the broadcast ends. Creators can continue the conversation through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social platforms, helping brands reach audiences in spaces where they already spend significant amounts of time.
Fabulate Gives SBS Access to 1.45 Million Australian Creators
Fabulate brings serious scale to the partnership. The platform says its network and technology cover around 1.45 million Australian creators, giving advertisers access to talent across different audience sizes, niches and communities. That could allow SBS advertisers to build creator campaigns around major programming moments while selecting personalities whose audiences already fit the brand. It also gives marketers more flexibility than simply repurposing a television advertisement for social media, because creators can produce content that feels more natural to the platforms where it appears.
Creators Can Extend Major Television Moments Online
Major television events rarely stay on television anymore. Viewers watch a sporting event or entertainment program, then immediately open social platforms to react, share clips, post opinions or follow creators discussing what happened. SBS appears to be building its advertising model around that behaviour. By combining its programming with Fabulate’s creator network, brands can follow audiences from the original broadcast into the conversations happening online rather than treating television and social media as completely separate campaigns.
FIFA World Cup Campaign Provided an Early Example
SBS has already tested how creators can fit into major brand partnerships. During the FIFA World Cup 2026, creators participated in the Hisense Hangout activation and helped extend discussion around the brand’s SBS sponsorship beyond the broadcast itself. The Fabulate partnership takes that concept further by making creator activity a more established part of the commercial packages SBS can offer advertisers. Instead of adding influencer content at the end of a campaign, brands could begin planning television and creator activity together from the start.
SBS Also Expands Into Outdoor Advertising
Creator marketing is only one part of the broader expansion. SBS has also partnered with oOh!media to give advertisers more opportunities to extend campaigns into out-of-home environments. Brands associated with SBS programming will be able to carry campaign ideas onto digital screens and outdoor placements, allowing the same creative message to appear as audiences move through cities, transport hubs and public spaces. SBS and oOh!media are also developing specialised advertising opportunities around SBS’s Tour de France coverage in 2027.
SBS News Will Appear Across More Public Screens
The relationship with oOh!media also includes wider distribution of SBS News content. News programming will appear across thousands of lift and lobby screens as well as selected airports and university locations. For SBS, this creates another point of contact with audiences outside television and digital streaming. For advertisers, it helps build a media environment where campaigns can move between broadcast, social media and physical locations rather than relying on a single format to generate attention.
Multicultural Retail Gives Brands Another Way to Reach Communities
SBS is also working with Multicultural Outdoor to extend campaigns into retail environments serving Australia’s culturally diverse communities. SBS CulturalConnect will contribute audience knowledge, cultural expertise and in-language creative capabilities, while Multicultural Outdoor provides access to its retail media network. The partnership could give brands a more relevant way to speak to consumers who use languages other than English at home, particularly when campaigns need more cultural adaptation than a simple translation.
Multicultural Creators Could Become Even More Important
The creator economy naturally overlaps with this multicultural strategy. Creators who produce content for specific cultural, language or community audiences often have relationships that traditional national advertising struggles to reproduce. A campaign that combines SBS programming, culturally relevant creators and retail placements could reach audiences at several points without making every piece of content look identical. That may become especially useful for brands trying to communicate with communities that have historically received generic versions of national campaigns.
Creator Marketing Is Becoming Part of the Main Media Plan
The SBS announcement highlights a wider change happening across advertising. Creator marketing is increasingly moving closer to the centre of media planning rather than sitting in a separate influencer marketing budget. Television broadcasters, digital publishers, retailers and advertising platforms are all competing for attention across multiple channels, and creators are becoming one of the ways those channels connect. For marketers, the attraction is not simply creator reach. It is the ability to turn a polished brand campaign into content that feels more conversational and more closely tied to individual communities.
SBS Wants Advertisers to Measure What Happens After Exposure
SBS is also expanding campaign measurement as part of its 2027 commercial strategy. Through partnerships involving CommBank iQ and HYP, eligible advertisers will be able to examine outcomes such as website visits, physical store visits, customer growth and sales. That measurement element matters because brands increasingly want creator and media campaigns to demonstrate something beyond impressions. Combining television exposure, creator content, outdoor advertising and retail activity with stronger measurement could make it easier for advertisers to understand how different parts of a campaign work together.
What the SBS and Fabulate Partnership Means for Creators
For Australian creators, the Fabulate partnership could provide another route into campaigns attached to major television, entertainment and sporting properties. SBS brings premium programming and national cultural moments, while Fabulate provides the creator infrastructure needed to take those moments onto social platforms. Brands sit between the two, looking for ways to remain visible after the original broadcast has ended. That could create more opportunities for creators who can translate a major campaign into content that still feels believable to their own audiences.
Television Is Becoming the Starting Point, Not the Finish Line
The bigger story is not simply that SBS has signed another creator marketing partnership. It is that the broadcaster appears to be building campaigns around how audiences actually move between media today. Someone might discover a brand during an SBS broadcast, encounter a creator discussing the same campaign later on Instagram or TikTok, see the message again on an outdoor screen and finally come across it inside a retail environment. The campaign does not belong to one platform anymore. Television may still create the big moment, but increasingly, that moment is only the beginning.
Sources
SBS — “SBS offers marketers greater reach with extension into outdoor, creator economy and retail”
https://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/2026/09/01/sbs-offers-marketers-greater-reach-with-extension-into-outdoor-creator-economy-and-retail/
SBS — SBS News and oOh!media partnership announcement
https://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/
