Definition & Explanation

A broken supply chain occurs when multiple unauthorized resellers exist between a publisher and buyer, inflating costs and reducing transparency. In programmatic advertising, this means an ad campaign passes through numerous intermediaries and redundant auction paths before reaching the publisher, resulting in wasted spend and auction duplication. These multi-hop supply paths are a leading cause of inefficiency in ad tech, making it difficult for advertisers to know where their money goes and for publishers to capture fair revenue.