ADVERTISING

In the weeds

In the US, cannabis is a $17.5 billion industry. That’s despite its legality varying from state to state. Oh, and the fact that it’s still illegal federally. 

Those contradictions create inevitable challenges for anyone running a cannabis business, especially when it comes to marketing. The stigma around the substance also means agencies, publishers, and platforms are reluctant to engage.

Despite the barriers, cannabis brands have carved out ways to promote their products online. Often, that means relying on organic content and SEO. Niche programmatic ad solutions are also emerging.

Post if you dare

If you’re a small business, arguably the most accessible and affordable tools to advertise your products are: a) the largest search engine and b) the largest social media network. Unfortunately for cannabis businesses, Google and Facebook both have policies that heavily restrict the advertising of anything cannabis-related.

While paid ads typically won’t fly, brands don’t have to stay off those platforms completely. Organic social media posts are a common way for cannabis businesses to get the word out.

But, but, but: Because organic content geofenced cannabis-friendly states, posts have to be rather vague. Devon Herrington, head of marketing at dutchie, a cannabis e-commerce platform, explained that while Instagram is a popular tool for cannabis marketers, they’re still left guessing in many cases because of the platform’s policy.

• “For example, educational content related to cannabis is technically allowed, but some cannabis marketers believe even using terms like ‘cannabis’ or other similar phrases in post captions or tags will get your account flagged and potentially deactivated,” Herrington told Marketing Brew. 

With Google, cannabis brands can’t run paid advertisements, but “SEO is huge in cannabis,” Herrington said. Businesses can rely on blogs and white papers to optimize their sites and increase their search rankings.

Getting the normies onboard

OK, but this is a multi-billion dollar industry. SEO wizardry and vague social media posts can’t be the whole marketing strategy. Agencies and publishers do play a role, but cannabis brands often struggle to find ones willing to work with them. 

• Shreeve said this mainly stems from the stigma around the product. Plus, many agencies just lack the know-how to deal with cannabis’s regulatory minefield. 
• “A team that doesn’t really truly understand the space, understand the plan, understand the consumer—they find it too difficult to manage those customers and clients because it’s just outside their wheelhouse,” Chris Shreeve, who heads the cannabis and CBD division at programmatic ad agency PrograMetrix, told us.

Things are opening up on the publisher side, though. The increased legitimization of cannabis means an increased market potential. 

“What used to be a strong ‘No’ has now morphed into a ‘Yes, but only here,’ or a ‘Maybe in the future,’” Juanjo Feijoo, CMO at Weedmaps, another cannabis e-commerce platform, said.  

Read the full story to learn about the role programmatic ads play in cannabis, and how you might even see a 30-second ad for a dispensary on your 60-inch TV.—ZS

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook’s

Someone call pest control: Facebook’s got a bug problem. Or had a bug problem.

Earlier this week, Heracles Media analyst and strategy consultant Eric Seufert tweeted that Facebook emailed advertisers on Monday to let them know it had fixed a bug in the Facebook app that was sending murky data about campaign performance on the iPhone 12 since…February. According to Seufert, that means data from as many as 100 million iPhone users could have been affected .

Facebook confirmed the report to Marketing Brew. Liz Martin, a Facebook spokesperson, sent us a corporate statement noting that “around 10% of total SKAdNetwork conversions”—Apple’s way of measuring advertisements that lead to app installs—were not counted or reported. 

• “We are communicating with advertisers whose metrics may have been impacted to make sure they are aware,” the statement read. “The impact on specific campaign metrics will vary.”

Though some pointed out that it’s a bit incomprehensible for Facebook, one of the largest platforms in the world, to allow for such a mistake, it was possibly due, in part, to Apple’s recent privacy changes. Facebook gets its campaign metrics from Apple, which it then relays to advertisers.

• The financial fallout may be hard to determine, said Brinden Sillito, director of digital marketing at agency Max Connect, which runs “pretty much every campaign type that Facebook offers.”
• “If you’re making optimizations on campaigns based on data, it’s hard to say what that would have been had you made the right optimizations based on accurate data,” he explained. “I’m sure that there are countless agencies that have lost clients based on performance that was probably better than they realized.”

Click here to read the full story.—RB

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FROM THE CREW

In-housing recap

Last month, we wrote a series of articles about how in-housing continues to impact the marketing industry, affecting everything from hiring to campaign execution. In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of our coverage.

• The perks and challenges of taking creative capabilities in-house
• As the Great Resignation continues, agencies lose workers to brands
• Squarespace’s creative VP talks creating campaigns internally
• Brands are bringing media in-house, but not without roadblocks

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Nielsen’s accreditation for national and local TV measurement is being suspended by the Media Ratings Council.
• Inuit is considering buying MailChimp for more than $10 billion.
• Uber hired a new GM of advertising, former Amazon director Mark Grether.
• Google could be hit with a new federal antitrust lawsuit later this year, this time over its dominance in digital advertising.
• Twitter Super Follows are here. If you’ve ever wanted to pay to read a tweet, you can do that now. 

SPONSORED BY MORNING CONSULT

Trust us, it’s all about trust. Covid accelerated the rise of e-commerce, but you know that already. A less well-documented phenomenon that affects your business? How the shift to online shopping has impacted consumer trust for brands. Morning Consult’s “Trust in Retail & E-commerce Report” lays out all the info you need to build trust with consumers in our new online shopping landscape. Read it here.

FRENCH PRESS

Ad tech: Google’s VP and GM of advertising Vidhya Srinivasan talked to Ad Age about shifts in targeting and measurement in the online ad space.

B2B: Can you really use TikTok in your B2B marketing strategy? Here are some tips on how to do just that.

$$: If you’re not sure how much money you should be dedicating to social, this guide can help.

Tips for text: Thousands of top Shopify-powered brands use Attentive for personalized text messaging that drives shopper engagement, big results, and billions in revenue. Start building a winning SMS strategy with Attentive’s Complete SMS Marketing Guide for Shopify Brands.*

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Why every snack now has a spicy version
• Video and audio in dating apps could be an opportunity for marketers
• TikTok is testing a new API to help better match creators with brands

AD TECH COMPANY OR LONDON NIGHTCLUB?

There are a lot of questionably named companies in the murky marketing universe. Two of these are real ad tech companies. Three are nightclubs in London. Can you figure out which is which? Keep scrolling for the answers. 

1. Fyber
2. XOYO
3. TUNE
4. Fabric
5. FOLD

AD TECH COMPANY OR LONDON NIGHTCLUB ANSWERS

If you try to dance the night away at TUNE or Fyber, you might get some weird looks from the marketing professionals working there.