Omnicom Media Group Launches Industry’s First Supply Chain-Based Media Activation Tool

Omnicom Media Group, the media services division of Omnicom Group Inc  has launched the Supply Chain IQ Score, the industry’s first supply-chain based media activation tool, in partnership with Crisp, an open retail data platform.

As affirmed in last month’s White House economic report, the supply chain crisis that erupted during the Covid crisis is not fading away as the pandemic subsides. With inventory challenges becoming the new normal, marketers need the ability to quickly adjust their media spend to product availability without negatively impacting performance.

Powered by Crisp, which pipes normalized data from more than 80 % of the top U.S. retailers and distributors including Target, Amazon, UNFI and CVS into the Omni open marketing orchestration platform that supports all Omnicom agencies, OMG’s Supply Chain IQ Score gives media planners day-to-day visibility into SKU inventory data at the physical store, digital shelf, and inventory-in-transit levels, enabling media investment to be shifted away from low inventory products in real time.

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Historically, that shift would have been where the response ended – usually after a significant amount of budget had already been expended sending consumers to empty shelves before inventory reporting caught up with the ad spend. However, using the Supply Chain IQ Score, as soon as an inventory issue is revealed planners can leverage two years of sell-through and distribution data from Crisp to quickly find an SKU in the brand portfolio that has high repeat purchase behavior, healthy inventory, and strong market basket correlation to the low inventory item. Working within Omni, the team can determine how much spend needs to be redeployed to the alternate SKU to meet performance targets, and execute the new buy.

“The Supply Chain IQ Score gives brands the power to quickly, strategically and effectively move media investment at the speed of sales,” says Marc Rossen, SVP Investment and Activation Analytics for OMG North America. “It flips the historic response to supply chain disruption from ‘pull the spend back ‘to ‘push the spend toward” – increasing media ROI and helping our clients meet performance goals despite supply constraints.”

Adds Crisp founder and CEO Are Traashdahl, “You can have the best insights, the most engaging content, and a big media budget – but at the end of the day, you can’t sell what’s not on the shelf. Leveraging the combined force of Crisp’s data-delivery technology and Omni’s marketing orchestration capabilities, the Supply Chain IQ Score enables unprecedented alignment of product inventory and media investment, assuring that marketing dollars are sending consumers to what IS on the shelf.”

According to OMG Managing Director, Commerce, John Schorr, the Supply Chain IQ Score will also be deployed in a variety of use cases beyond managing for low inventory, including geotargeting ad delivery according to actual on-shelf inventory; measuring sales-lift in real-time; local store campaigns; supporting new-product launches; and aligning promotion to product freshness windows to reduce spoilage and waste.

Summing the long-term impact, Schorr says, “The Supply Chain IQ exemplifies a future where media will be a true catalyst for consumer demand, influencing e-sales operations and supply chain distribution as we connect product availability to marketing resulting in a better consumer experience.”