• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 21, 2014

Marin Software has developed a feature it hopes will help marketers create campaigns faster, as product stock data changes in real-time. The feature will change, pause and restart a campaign based on feed data. The move aims to automate, optimize and eliminate errors in campaigns as marketers attempt to manage product feed data across search, social and display channels.

Changes have been made to Marin's Dynamic Campaigns platform. The inventory feed management tool integrates with Productsup, a cloud-based data management provider. Through Dynamic Campaigns, retailers align product inventory with information in online ad campaigns, explains Dan Morris, director of product marketing at Marin.

Marketers are the new strategists, technologists, and scientists. The future of their business depends on it, but as inventory and product attributes change, retailers often struggle to maintain real-time information in creative ad pieces. Automation helps, and Marin's software allows marketers to set bid goals that vary by product, product category or business unit. For example, if an advertiser experiences a surge in inventory or needs to offload inventory due to seasonality, automatic bid rules are set to increase the promotion of certain products.

Marin sets bids in the platform using an algorithm that considers the lifetime value for each product based on audience data collected across channels. Ad creative remains a major part of paid-search campaigns, so a bad or inaccurate ad will affect overall performance.

Marin's Dynamic Campaigns platform automates the process, so the creative pieces for the ads have the most current product information. New product versions continually come into stock and marketers must update the ads. The platform will automatically pull the latest information into the ad, rather than require the marketers to pause the ad to make manual changes. This is done for any change in product SKU, price, brand, color, and more.

Marketers can design the creative pieces for search ads in advance. When the inventory arrives, the campaigns begin. "Nothing is more frustrating to an online shopper than clicking on an ad only to find out it's out of stock or not the version advertised," Morris said. "Ads are deleted when inventory falls out of stock. It's based on feed data."