Audience & Inventory Planning

Balance Audience Demand with Ad Inventory Precision

Connect audience insight with real-time inventory to maximize revenue and deliver campaigns with confidence.

The Strategic Challenge

After two decades working with leading ad-sales organizations, we see a recurring pattern: advertisers ask for precise audience targeting, while publishers and networks often struggle to align that demand with what can actually be delivered. Planning lives across CRM, OMS, and ad servers; sellable products and placements evolve faster than rate cards; and signals from briefs, seasonality, and tent-pole moments don’t flow into a single view of supply and demand.

Without a common model, sales teams lack timely visibility into what’s available to meet specific buyer criteria. Premium segments can sell out while lower-value inventory goes unused; rates are set annually instead of dynamically; and campaigns risk under-delivery or last-minute makegoods. In multi-channel environments, poor audience and inventory planning isn’t just operational friction, it’s a direct revenue leak.

Our Point of View

Audience & inventory planning is the bridge between audience value and ad revenue. The winners treat it as a strategic, data-driven capability, not a spreadsheet exercise. They align audience definitions with inventory eligibility and pacing rules; express packages as repeatable products; and give leaders scenario views that balance yield, delivery confidence, and advertiser outcomes.

Organizations that master this unlock: higher CPMs on premium audience segments, lower risk of under-delivery, and tighter alignment across Editorial, Ad Ops, Revenue Operations, and Sales. Our experience spans publishers, broadcasters, streaming platforms, retail media networks, and OOH, and the through-line is consistent: success requires an operating model that unites technology, data, and cross-functional governance so inventory becomes a revenue driver rather than a constraint.

How V2 Helps

We partner with sales and operations leaders to design, operationalize, and sustain audience & inventory planning that drives confidence and growth. We start by aligning stakeholders on a shared language for audience, eligibility, and sellable products. From there, we translate intent into ways of working the field will use—clear rules for packages and placements, guardrails that protect premium value, and pacing views that surface risk while there’s still time to act.

In practice, that includes:

• • Mapping audience demand to inventory availability with eligibility, frequency, and pacing rules the whole org can follow.
  • Defining named packages and product forms that connect audience promise with inventory reality, across channels and formats.
  • Introducing rate discipline and scenario planning so leaders can balance price, sell-through, and delivery confidence.
  • Establishing a cadence that brings Editorial, Sales, Ad Ops, and RevOps together around the same data to make timely decisions.
  • Building renewal-ready performance narratives so today’s delivery informs tomorrow’s pricing and package strategy.

Our goal isn’t just visibility; it’s muscle memory, sellers who know what they can promise, operators who deliver what’s been promised, and leaders who can plan revenue with clarity.

Integrated Salesforce Solutions

When we make this discipline scalable, Salesforce provides the backbone. The mix varies by client, but these products usually anchor the work.

Marketing Cloud Intelligence (MCI): Aggregates campaign and audience performance across channels into buyer-friendly views. MCI supports in-flight pacing, outcome storytelling, and renewal materials that arrive in time to influence decisions.

Data Cloud: Creates a unified, consent-aware audience graph—aligning traits and eligibility with sellable products. Data Cloud grounds package definitions in real behavior, improving targeting confidence and inventory utilization.

Tableau: Brings audience and inventory into the same glass with dynamic dashboards and planning scenarios. Leaders gain a clear view into sell-through, price realization, and revenue potential by product line and market.

Sales Cloud: Provides the framework for packaging and opportunity management. Sellers work from defined offers tied to available inventory, improving the connection between audience insights and deal creation.

Recent Customer Success: Turning Inventory Chaos into Revenue Precision

The Business Challenge

A multi-region sports network faced persistent under-delivery risk and revenue leakage. Inventory lived in separate systems for digital and linear; audience signals were fragmented; and rate cards drifted away from what could be reliably delivered. Sellers lacked a consistent view of eligibility by package and channel, planners reacted late to demand spikes, and advertisers frequently asked for bespoke combinations that weren’t operationally dependable.

Our Approach & Solution

V2 began by aligning executives on a shared model that connected audience promise to inventory reality. We documented eligibility rules, pacing expectations, and package forms that could scale across channels and tent-pole moments. A Data Cloud readiness assessment established taxonomy and identity conventions for audience traits, while Sales Cloud was configured so opportunities referenced named packages instead of one-offs.

We brought audience and inventory together in Tableau for scenario planning, exposing sell-through risk, price sensitivity, and flighting options, and used MCI to assemble timely, renewal-ready performance stories. A cross-functional cadence gave Editorial, Sales, Ad Ops, and RevOps the same signals each week, turning planning from a reconciliation exercise into a decision function.

The Outcome
Teams moved from reactive allocation to proactive planning. Premium packages held price more consistently, under-delivery risk dropped, and sell-through improved across priority segments. Most importantly, leaders gained a dependable rhythm for balancing price, delivery confidence, and advertiser outcomes, fueling stronger renewals and a calmer quarter.

We’d Be Glad To Help

If your audience insight and inventory reality aren’t moving in lockstep, we can help. V2 brings the management-consulting discipline and Salesforce execution needed to make audience & inventory planning a durable growth capability.

Reach out below, and we’ll schedule time with your team.

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