Ad serving and geo-political uncertainties (part 2)
                     Ad serving and geo-political uncertainties (part 2)
Watson F
Writes on AdSpeed ad servers, involved with Adspeed ad 
server solutions and Adspeed Ad server for publishers.
Sanctions, especially economic sanctions, affect many companies 
directly and indirectly. If your business serves sanctioned markets 
and/or sanctioned clients then you will feel the impact directly. 
However, there are additional issues that you should know and prepare 
for when countries use their influence to pressure the sanctioned 
country.
Changing regulations
Some businesses might be tempted to ignore sanctions and plow ahead, 
but that is something that may not sit well with those on the outside 
looking in. There are legal consequences and hefty fines for those 
businesses that fail to comply and follow new regulations. Even more 
challenging for businesses, these policies and regulations change based 
on developing events so they can be very unpredictable and sudden. 
The correct way to do business today might no longer work tomorrow. 
Compliance to these changing regulations is definitely expensive and 
time consuming. For advertising companies, many just choose to pause 
or stop ad serving in the sanctioned country to avoid known and 
potential troubles instead of trying to work around them.
Public backlash
Not all sanctions are the same. Some sanctions are very limited and only 
target specific industries, companies or even specific individuals. Some 
sanctions are basically recommendations and non-legal binding. In these 
cases, non-compliance does not lead to fines and legal trouble. 
However, it could still lead to a loss of business because of indirect 
causes. Some companies stop doing business in the sanctioned country 
not because of legal requirements but because it is not worth the 
trouble.
If a majority of your audience, clients or stakeholders boycott and do 
not want you to do business with the sanctioned country then that 
might be even stronger than any formal written regulation. When 
people look at the sanctioned country as the bad guy, it is guilty by 
association if your company continues to do business as usual. While 
some people may look at staying the course as brave, other people are 
not quite as likely to view it in a good light. For example, in the current 
Ukraine and Russian situation, one country is very much the aggressor 
and many companies stop doing business in Russia because of public 
backlash. Because it is a controversial decision to stay and go against the 
flow, it must not be considered lightly. Choosing the wrong side and 
going against public opinion could be business suicide so you must 
weight the costs and benefits carefully.
Problems with cross-country payments
Things can get especially tricky when trying to do business in an 
unsettled geo-political environment. There are a host of issues with 
payment infrastructure. People in affected countries might start pulling 
their money out of the banks. Making online transactions might become 
more difficult because there are only several global companies that 
dominate the payment processing industry. Volatile changes in 
monetary values and foreign exchange rates might have a significant 
negative impact on your business. In these situations, it is perhaps best 
to cease or slow down transactions with the affected nation or region 
until things become more stable.
For our advertising industry, advertisers might not be able to pay for 
their ad serving campaigns and publishers might not be able to receive 
payment for their ad sales if international cross-country transactions are 
blocked. Exchange rates might change drastically from one day to the 
next day, which makes pricing ad spaces risky. The chosen currency to 
settle typical ad orders might no longer be profitable. With so many 
uncertainties, the best and safest approach is often pausing or 
terminating all campaigns in your ad server until some clarity and 
stability is established.
About Adspeed
AdSpeed ad server is a reliable & powerful ad serving and ad 
management solution that serves your ads, tracks impressions & clicks 
and reports ad statistics in real-time. Driven by the latest ad serving 
technologies, the goal of Adspeed adserver is to provide a reliable 
platform that can help in executing online advertising strategy more 
efficiently. 
Thank you for spending your precious time in reading this article.