Streamlining Commerce Media Ad Inventory Management

Companies with large, loyal followings—from retailers and airlines to tech companies and hotel chains—are sitting on a gold mine of first-party data. By turning this data into precise customer segments, these organizations can provide the targeted audiences that advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach.

The promise of high-margin ad revenue is an attractive proposition for any company. But advertising sales is an entirely different business from selling flight tickets or convincing travelers to stay at a hotel. Managing ad inventory across in-store and digital channels, in particular, can pose a major challenge for new commerce media networks. 

Commerce media networks need both a defined ad product catalog as well as software capable of simplifying the complexities of omnichannel advertising sales. 

Let’s dive into each piece of it. 

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Key Takeways:

• Establishing a framework for categorizing and tracking inventory across diverse channels is the essential first step toward managing a scalable commerce media network.
• Traditional CRMs and disconnected order management systems lack the specialized logic and unified customer profiles required to manage fluid ad inventory and precise audience segmentation.
• Replacing manual workarounds with integrated workflows and a centralized calendar eliminates inventory blindness and protects margins through automated, demand-based pricing.
• Investing in a purpose-built infrastructure allows your media business to scale alongside advertiser demand while reducing the operational risks associated with fragmented, manual processes.

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Defining Your Ad Product Catalog

Commerce media networks have many advertising channels at their disposal, and many of them are significantly more effective and measurable than the TV and radio ads to which many of us are accustomed. 

For example, in-store ads, including audio and digital displays, are proving to be an emerging growth area for many retail media networks. And for good reason. Thirty-seven percent of shoppers say they made a purchase after seeing in-store media promoting it. 

But in-store is only the start. Other popular channels among commerce media networks include:

• In-app 
• Connected TVs (CTV)
• Email 
• Onsite search results 
• Banner ads
• Offsite ads on Google, social media, and other websites 

Commerce media networks don’t need to activate all of these channels at once. Rather, they should explore their own historical data, as well as industry best practices, to determine which channels to invest in initially and then align them with the customer journey. By experimenting with different channels, commerce media networks can learn how to best drive awareness, engagement, and ultimately, purchasing decisions. 

Simply knowing where you want to place ads, however, is only half the battle. You need to sell the space. For many commerce media networks, this represents a major hurdle. 

Why Your Current Sales Tools Are Falling Short

Companies looking to deploy commerce media operations likely use CRM systems for purposes such as tracking their customers’ purchasing history and service requests. In most cases, traditional CRM performs these tasks well. But advertising sales is a different beast. 

Inventory availability constantly changes. Pricing varies depending on the timing and format of an ad. And all of the ad channels mentioned earlier, from in-app to banner ads, are typically managed using separate and disconnected systems. 

A generic CRM is designed to track a pipeline of static products, but it lacks the native logic required to manage the fluid nature of ad products and flight dates. While some companies attempt to solve this by pairing a traditional CRM with a separate order management system (OMS), this often creates its own set of challenges. 

OMS are unable to pull in and organize the customer data required for effective media planning. Without unified customer profiles into which first-party and external data can feed, networks will struggle to build the precise customer segments advertisers seek.

Let’s double-click into each of these challenges.

• Pricing and packaging: Market demand for specific ad placements can vary depending on a number of factors, including timing and seasonality, format, audience targeting, and competition. Without a comprehensive ad product catalog and the tools to configure demand-based pricing, ad sales reps are at risk of delivering inaccurate quotes to advertisers. Commerce media networks may also miss out on revenue by failing to account for market demand for an ad placement at any particular point in time. 
• Inventory blindness: Advertising sales is fast paced, with multiple stakeholders and many channels. Ad sales reps are constantly placing temporary holds on placements during negotiation. Later, they need to either formally reserve placements once a contract is agreed upon or release the holds to ensure their availability is visible to other reps. Commerce media networks that attempt to manage their inventory using either spreadsheets or generic CRM risk selling ad placements that have already been reserved for a separate advertiser. Alternatively, if holds on placements aren’t released when negotiations with advertisers fall through, ad sales teams are at risk of underselling.
• Siloed systems: When an ad sale is finalized, potential revenue is finally on the books. But to realize this revenue, commerce media networks must actually execute the campaign and report results to the advertiser. Too often, CRM systems are disintegrated from the software responsible for executing the campaign, which forces teams to transfer information from the CRM into each of these systems manually—a process typically referred to as “swivel-chairing.” It’s time-consuming and can lead to delays in reporting. Worse yet, data entry errors can result in ad campaigns that fail to meet the terms agreed upon in the contract, forcing commerce media networks to pay out “make-goods” to advertisers. 

While these challenges can feel like the cost of doing business in a new category, the most successful networks are proving that manual workarounds are no longer a prerequisite for growth.

Automating the Commerce Media Ad Sales Lifecycle

Scaling a commerce media operation requires a shift in focus from adding headcount to increasing operational efficiency. This transition involves replacing manual tasks with automated workflows that allow a media business to handle higher transaction volumes without a corresponding increase in complexity.

Creating a single source of ad inventory truth 

Creating a unified ad selling experience begins before the first sales pitch is ever delivered. Commerce media networks must have a single source of truth for their ad customer data, behavioral segmentation, and product catalog that ad sales reps can easily reference as they build quotes for advertisers. 

For example, consider video ads. On the surface, it’s a simple concept: It’s an ad that runs during a video. But demand for a video ad varies depending on a number of factors, such as whether it’s pre- or post-roll as well as the ad’s length. 

Pricing adds an additional layer of nuance. Commerce media networks may want to run promotions to drive sales or offer advertisers bulk discounts. 

By consolidating these variables into a modern advertising product catalog, networks can eliminate the pricing errors that lead to inaccurate quotes. This system ensures that demand-based pricing and bulk discounts are applied automatically, protecting margins and preventing the missed revenue that occurs when reps rely on static, outdated price lists.

Standardizing the workflow from proposal to campaign

A streamlined operation treats sales and execution as a single, continuous process rather than two separate functions. When your sales tools are integrated with your inventory data, your team can move through the lifecycle more effectively.

Unlike spreadsheets that require manual updates, a centralized calendar provides real-time visibility into what is actually available to sell. When a rep places a temporary hold, the system instantly updates availability across the network, preventing other reps from double-selling the same slot. Once a contract is signed, the transition from hold to reservation happens within the same system, ensuring that the final campaign reflects the exact terms negotiated during the sales cycle.

Breaking down siloed ad tech stacks

Commerce media networks can move past swivel-chairing by seeking out ad sales CRM systems that “talk” with the rest of the software they use to run and measure ad campaigns,  including ad servers, and billing and campaign operations systems.

Integrated systems replace manual data entry with a two-way dialogue, effectively turning your CRM into a command center for campaign execution. By automating the flow of data from the initial quote to the ad server, commerce media networks can virtually eliminate the data entry errors that result in costly make-goods. This allows teams to focus on driving renewals and upsells using accurate, real-time performance reports.

Building for Long-term Growth 

Today, more and more companies are seeking to build a stream of high-margin revenue by tapping into their first-party data. But it’s no small feat. As the commerce media landscape continues to evolve, companies committed to moving away from fragmented, manual workflows will emerge as leaders. 

Investing in a purpose-built infrastructure today ensures that your network can scale alongside advertiser demand without increasing operational risk.

AI supported the writers and editors who created this article.