Work → Cannabis MSO · 14 markets
Programmatic where the big platforms say no
Cannabis can't buy search or social the normal way. That leaves programmatic, and fourteen different state rulebooks.
Blended program performance
Revenue is stated as a range at the client's request. Exact figures available under NDA.
The constraint
Fourteen markets, fourteen sets of rules.
Every legal state writes its own advertising statute. Audience composition thresholds, mandatory warnings, restrictions on imagery that could appeal to minors, proximity rules for schools and playgrounds, and hard limits on what a creative can claim. A campaign that clears in one state can be a violation two borders over.
So the media plan and the compliance framework get built together. Not creative first, legal second.
The approach
Buy narrow, verify wide.
Inventory discipline
Whitelisted supply with age-composition guarantees, geofencing built from the dispensary footprint rather than DMA convenience, and exclusions maintained per state.
Creative per jurisdiction
One message system, versioned by state, with the required disclosures baked into the template so nothing ships without them.
Measurement against stores
Programmatic vendors grade their own homework. Performance was reconciled against store-level sales data so the return figure meant something outside the platform's dashboard.
Budget by market maturity
New markets funded for awareness, established ones held to efficiency, with the split revisited as each state's competitive set filled in.
Result
A number that survived scrutiny.
Roughly twenty to one blended across the portfolio, verified against store data rather than taken from vendor reporting, with no compliance escalations across the fourteen markets.