There are five colours on the page. Cream, black, green, red and blue.
The blue one is lovely. Naturally, the blue one is unavailable.
The advertisement shows blue.
You can probably see where this is going.
I have a soft spot for the person who spots this before somebody spends an afternoon adjusting bids. They are usually looking at the actual website, an activity that still feels strangely optional in some campaign discussions.
A page total doesn't tell you which option the customer wanted. They may land, admire the blue version, click the choices and discover that the available alternatives do not do the same job for them. “But green is in stock” is not much comfort when they've already decided how blue would look in the room.
I wouldn't instantly pause every advertisement. I'd check the promise and the route. Is blue mentioned? Is it the main photograph? Can you see the stock position before you commit time? Does choosing an unavailable option explain what happens next?
An honest waiting-list invitation might be useful. A pretend purchase journey followed by a quiet dead end is just annoying as hell.
The overall conversion rate can become a distraction here. Some people are happily buying cream. Others wanted blue. Put them in the same average and it looks like a mysterious problem with “the landing page.”
Perhaps the landing page is doing fine for the options it actually has.
Ask the product team when the variant is expected back. Keep uncertainty visible. If nobody knows, don't turn a hopeful estimate into a promise because the copy needed a date.
And please check where the photograph appears beyond the advertisement. A correct stock label at the bottom does not cancel a big blue promise at the top.
The customer should understand the choice they are being offered. That might produce an order today, a sensible decision to wait, or a departure because none of the available colours suits them.
Only one of those is an immediate sale. All three can be perfectly reasonable outcomes.
What is unreasonable is watching the account wobble and deciding the customers are behaving strangely. They're behaving like people who wanted the blue one.
A thought worth keeping?
