If you remember the days of long lunches, then you’ll also remember the days when large media budgets could be won on trust and a handshake. In 2026 media buyers no longer buy on gut feeling. Every campaign is heavily audited. Habitual spending is on its way out.
To win modern brand budgets, sales teams cannot just try to be smarter than their competitors; they have to think completely differently. At Sunday, we show clients and partners why their money will work before they spend a single penny. Instead of relying on traditional vanity metrics like impressions, reach and open rates, we concentrate on sales, enquiries and new customer acquisition – the real-world outcomes clients really care about.
Every partner requires a distinct data-driven methodology. For the online retailer Ocado we blend their technological precision with ad sales expertise. We measure the precise uplift of every product in OcadoLife magazine, comparing the sales data of customers who received the magazine with those who didn’t. We also check the results are statistically sound. Over time, this tracking shows us which categories, products and formats perform best so that we can give brands predictable outcomes before they even book.
A different approach is applied for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Find a Surveyor directory service. We analyse search activity region by region and map it against the number of firms actively promoting their services in each area. This analysis gives us a clear picture of where demand outstrips supply. We work with surveying firms to turn this insight into strategy, helping them decide which regions to prioritise, where to expand and how to position themselves against local competition.
The same analysis shapes our own new business pipeline with RICS and enables us to pinpoint the firms best placed to benefit from the platform. We then approach them with evidence of where their next customers are coming from.
While it might sound obvious to use data from an engaged audience to shape a commercial strategy and win partners, many organisations don’t use their data when they sell. Membership bodies like RICS and retailers like Ocado sit on goldmines of rich first-party data – some of the most valuable assets in modern media. The Sunday approach is designed to help clients make the most of the audience insights they already own.
It is a strategy that is only going to matter more. As third-party data tracking dries up and global privacy regulations tighten, the organisations that know their audiences best will hold the strongest hands with advertisers.
It’s not just the behaviour of organisations that is changing; the role of the salesperson has evolved too. Our team reads the data, interprets the trends and advises, working as commercial strategists just as much as sellers. The result is that our clients and partners are still buying on trust – but it is now trust backed up with confidence. It translates directly into growing revenue as every successful campaign tells us more about what works. The era of long lunches might be at an end, but the relationships still matter – they’re just shaped by data.