The benefits have included “retargeting, defining the message and delivering timely, accurate product ads based on consumers’ past browsing behavior and past purchase behavior,” Cesani said.
Trulieve has bolstered its “house of brands” approach, he said, touting Roll One in Arizona and Florida, Sweet Top edibles in Arizona and Modern flower in Pennsylvania.
“It has helped build a D2C channel,” Cesani said. “It’s a full-funnel approach.”
Cannaconvos
For all its well-publicized problems, including an advertiser exodus since Elon Musk bought the site, X is hyping its future potential for brands in “audio, video, messaging, payments and banking,” Alianiello said, reiterating a statement from CEO Linda Yaccarino at Vox Media’s recent 2023 Code Conference.
X is a hotbed of cannabis chatter, per Alianiello, who said there have been more than 20 million posts about cannabis from 4 million unique authors in 2023. It’s the top platform for recreational cannabis users, and X users are 25% more likely than non-X users to be recreational cannafans, she said, citing GWI research.
Considering that data and other factors, Illinois-based multistate operator Verano began advertising on X earlier this year in several markets, promoting its Zen Leaf dispensaries and Savvy affordable weed line.
“We saw significant jumps in all major KPIs—ad engagements, web traffic conversion, follower growth—as campaigns optimized,” David Spreckman, Verano’s CMO, told Adweek. “Campaigns remain active, and we’re now seeing sustainable return on ad spend across the board.”
Social buys are appealing in general because of their “expansive reach combined with low barrier to entry,” though options for cannabis companies are few, Spreckman said. “The X platform allows advertisers to be very targeted in delivering impressions—you can generate results and positive ROAS with relatively smaller investments by way of limiting waste.”
Cookies, an influential brand out of Northern California that’s now gone global, hasn’t yet made an ad buy on X but may test the channel later this year or first quarter of 2024, per Crystal Millican, head of marketing and retail.
“Marketing dollars are precious for us, so we’ve waited to see what early Twitter paid adopters are seeing in terms of ROI and to what degree Twitter is able to overcome common cannabis hurdles—difficulty measuring results, attribution challenges and struggling to define incrementality,” she added.
Follow the leader
While the platform continues to court advertisers in all categories—recently introducing new brand safety tools amid an ad revenue drop—it has appealed to cannabis executives repeatedly at IRL events.