TrinityP3's 2026 State of the Pitch report calls out agencies for tolerating ghosting, year-long reviews and 120-day payment terms from Australian advertisers.
Agencies need to take more responsibility for participation because ultimately it is their business.
TrinityP3 has released its 2026 State of the Pitch report. The headline finding is blunt: agencies are letting advertisers treat them badly, and they need to stop.
Darren Woolley's team assessed 56 pitches across Australia. A fifth of them ended in "no outcome" or "still waiting." One agency only discovered it had lost a pitch three months later, via the trade press. Another global client requested a full year before the agency could invoice. These are not edge cases. They are becoming the norm.
Telcos, banks and utilities are running the worst processes. Telecommunications ranked as the single worst category for protracted pitches, with three in four telco reviews dragging past four months. Payment terms of up to 120 days are appearing in contracts. Some reviews are stretching close to a full year.
TrinityP3 pitches assessed in 2026 ended in no outcome or still waiting
Overall pitch satisfaction did tick up slightly, from 2.99 to 3.22 out of five. But that improvement masks a deeper dysfunction. The market has normalised ghosting, outcome-less processes and delayed payments to the point where a marginal improvement in satisfaction scores gets treated as good news.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has worked agency-side in Australia. A brand announces a review. Six agencies scramble to respond. Two months of strategy decks, tissue sessions and credential presentations follow. Then silence. No feedback. No decision. Sometimes no decision ever.
Why it matters
Pitch culture shapes agency economics. When reviews drag for months with no outcome, agencies burn senior hours they cannot recover. When payment terms stretch to 120 days, cash flow becomes a strategic vulnerability rather than an operational detail. These pressures flow downstream into staffing, into the quality of work agencies can afford to produce, and ultimately into the marketing outcomes brands receive.
The TrinityP3 data gives Australian marketers a mirror. If your pitch process takes longer than four months, you are part of the problem.
What to do about it
If you are an agency, set boundaries on which pitches you will enter. Ask for timelines, evaluation criteria and payment terms before committing resources. If you are a brand running a review, publish a timeline and stick to it. Notify every participant of the outcome within a week of the decision. Pay your agencies within 30 days. These are not radical ideas. They are basic professional conduct.