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Supply chain issues and ad serving

While supply chain issues have been a problem since the pandemic started, the issue came very much into focus during the holidays. Getting all the presents and gifts that you wanted to buy for yourself, friends and family proved to be an issue for many, both on the consumer and manufacturer side of things. As long as we remain in a pandemic and companies continue to struggle to fill vacant positions and to move things around quickly, this issue is going to remain. The question for companies looking to market their products during this tough time is how to manage their ad serving more effectively for as long as the supply chain problems stay in place. Let’s take a closer look at what companies are dealing with right now.

Inability to advertise with low or no inventory

You don’t want to advertise a product that is out of stock. The last thing that any company wants to do is spending money on ads for products that are being affected by supply chain problems. Customers who see ads for products they want will not be pleased if they click on an ad only to find out that what they want is not currently in stock or back-ordered. That level of frustration can lead to consumers looking elsewhere and potentially losing trust in the companies with inventory problems. Lost sales are a big issue for many companies. Therefore, you should closely monitor ad campaigns and set appropriate end dates. For a more advanced integration, find a way to integrate your inventory system with the ad server. You can use the ad server’s API to deactivate the ad once the inventory for that product is running low.

Different levels of impact

Not all companies and industries suffer the same issues with their supply chains. Some had to shut down for months while others kept going without a single setback. If you have been paying attention to online ads, you may have noticed that companies offering digital goods and services are more prominent than usual. For these companies, the supply chain issues do not even exist or only affect them lightly. Many employees at digital-first companies can work fully remote and they do not suffer major disruptions delivering their products and services. On the other hand, factory shutdowns, social distancing, restrictions from different countries create many problems for physical goods. Getting enough products from the factories to other upstream factories or to the end consumers has been a major problem. We see shortages everywhere and pretty much in all industries. Inflation is running high and things are becoming much more expensive than before. While those delivering physical goods are slowing down their marketing efforts right now, the digital companies are filling those gaps and seeing their business boom. There is an imbalance at the moment that we hope to see rectified sooner rather than later because not all things can be delivered digitally. The whole economy benefits from a balanced recovery across different sectors.

Part 2: Product pricing and system integration

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