PPC cannot sell what is not in stock.
A stockout does not stay in the warehouse. It walks into the ad account, pauses the campaigns, bleeds the rank, and then hands the blame to whoever runs the marketing. This page is for both people in that room: the founder paying for it, and the agency wearing it.
Felt in the ad account. Decided at the order-by date.
Walk the sequence backwards. Campaigns pause because the listing went dark. The listing went dark because the units were not there. The units were not there because a purchase order left too late. And the PO left too late because an order-by date passed, quietly, weeks earlier, while everyone was watching the dashboard that only records outcomes. The ad account is where the failure is felt. It is never where it was decided.
Campaigns paused, budget stranded
Spend stops mid-flight and restarts against a listing that has lost its momentum. The media plan was fine. The shelf was empty.
Organic position bleeds while the listing is dark
The position the ad spend helped buy erodes over the dark days, and buying it back costs more than holding it did. The report shows the dip under the marketing column, because that is the column reports have.
The performance review lands on the wrong desk
Whoever owns the dashboard owns the explaining. Paused campaigns and a rank dip read as a marketing problem in every deck, and the person who runs the ads ends up defending a supply chain they never touched.
Put your own numbers on the dark days: the stockout cost calculator takes two minutes and asserts nothing about your business you did not type into it.
The fix lives upstream of the ads.
Keeping the shelf full is a weekly discipline, not a heroic quarter: reconcile the counts, re-check the lead times, and make the reorder decisions before the order-by dates pass. That is the whole product here: one build that models the catalog, then a weekly plan with a senior lead owning the dates. The ads team you already have gets the one thing it cannot buy for itself: a listing that stays live. Why a tool alone does not close this →
Refer the inventory, keep the client.
You cannot fix a supply chain from inside an ad account, and taking the blame for one is how retainers die. The partner setup is built to be safe to use: we do inventory planning and nothing else, the scope walls are published, and we never pitch ads, listings or creative to anyone you send. Your client brings a stock report to a 30-minute call, you are welcome in the room, and they leave with the 90-day risk read whether or not the Engine fits.
The walls are published
No ads, no listings, no creative, no customer service. The scope table is public on the services page, which makes the referral defensible inside your own client relationship.
The intro is two lines
Send the client the booking link, or send us both a note and we take it from there. Nothing to package, nothing to co-sell.
The credit stays yours
A client whose bestsellers stay in stock is a client whose ad results hold, and the report that holds is yours. That is the trade.
Talk it through against your catalog.
Founders: bring a stock report and leave with the 90-day risk read. Agencies: bring the client whose report keeps taking the blame.