With the explosion of cannabis retail, drawing an audience can be difficult - especially with the schmorgesborg of Health Canada regulations restricting advertising and Meta’s asymmetrical enforcing of their Terms of Service. While certain avenues of traditional advertising may be barred, programmatic ads are an amazing opportunity.
What is Programmatic Advertising?
For those unfamiliar with programmatic advertising, we must first understand how traditional online advertising works. Traditional advertising has a website’s host placing space on their website or app for sale. A company negotiates for the space and sets the cost per thousand impressions - this being CPM.
Programmatic Advertising simplifies this process significantly. Instead of manual negotiations, programmatic advertising utilizes auction-based software to sell the space where the advertiser pays for the impressions on the value of who is viewing the ad, rather than a flat CPM.
What does this mean for Cannabis Brands?
Simply put, cannabis retailers can now target their potential customers easier than ever before. While before, many retailers would place their advertisements on adult websites and hope that they would reach those interested, now they can find and target specific demographics and geographical locations with ease.
While some programmatic ad platforms choose not to work with the cannabis industry, The Surfside Platform has excelled within cannabis, being used by large players in cannabis such as Pharmacann and Cookies. While Surfside has many features, their ability for offering cannabis retailers programmatic ads specifically targeting cannabis consumers. Surfside boasts the ability to:
- Advertise to cannabis consumers across 1M+ websites and mobile apps.
- Reach custom and lookalike audiences based on 25K+ behavioural attributes.
- Track in-store and e-commerce results from ad campaigns in a powerful performance dashboard.
Programmatic Ads for Cannabis Retailers
In addition to working with cannabis LPs, the most exciting application comes for cannabis retailers, who are already seeing success utilizing programmatic advertisements. One example is Burb, a BC-based chain of cannabis retailers. When asked about Surfside, their head of marketing, Will Alexander, said:
Surfside has been a great advertising partner for our business… By giving us the ability to advertise to local cannabis consumers with digital ads and track the results for both e-commerce and in-store sales, Surfside helps make sure that every ad dollar we spend is helping us grow.
Will Alexander – Surfside Head of Marketing
Burb isn’t an isolated case - we reached out directly to Surfside to ask about the potential return cannabis brands and retailers can expect to see with the use of programmatic ads. “Cannabis companies that are looking to advertise to new customers see an average of 3-5x return on ad spend when using Surfside as a solution,” says Blaise Lucey, VP of Marketing at Surfside. “With a full service approach that includes strategy, ad creative, and measurement, we work with each client to make sure every campaign is driving results that matter.”
While many platforms refuse to allow cannabis retailers to advertise, Surfside gives the entire cannabis industry the ability to reach millions of cannabis consumers across countless websites and apps. If your company is interested in programmatic advertising, please be sure to contact us using the contact form.
