Building Smarter Targeting Tools

In digital advertising, precision is power. When brands and retailers can connect the right product with the right audience at the right time, both advertisers and consumers win. At Weedmaps, we recognized the need for a more robust, intuitive targeting system within our ad server—one that would give marketers the flexibility to design campaigns around specific products, listings, and audience segments.

The result is our new targeting workflow for sponsored products, a toolset designed to streamline campaign setup and maximize performance.

Why We Built It

Sponsored products are set to be a cornerstone of cannabis advertising, but without granular controls, advertisers risk broad, inefficient campaigns. Our objective was to:

• Enable precision by allowing campaigns to focus on specific brands, products, and dispensary listings.

• Give advertisers flexibility in selecting individual elements or broader categories.

• Provide transparency through real-time campaign summaries, so advertisers can immediately see how choices affect spend, impressions, and CTR.

How It Works

The targeting workflow introduces an organized step-by-step approach:

1. Regions
   Advertisers can input specific regions (via comma-separated entries) to ensure their campaign only appears where it matters most.

2. Targeting by Ad Type & Brand
   The system supports campaign setup by ad type, such as Sponsored Products, and allows selection of a specific brand to spotlight.

3. Zones
   Campaigns can be targeted to distinct zones, such as a listing menu or a category landing page, enabling contextual placement where customers are already in shopping mode.

4. Listings
   Advertisers choose whether to target all listings or individual listings. For example, campaigns might promote delivery listings from specific dispensaries like “Box of Bud” or “KronDors Kush Dungeon.”

5. Products
   Flexibility continues with product targeting: advertisers can highlight all products from a brand, all products in a category, or individual products—such as a “Super Skunk Pre-roll” or “Sour Diesel Pro-roll 5 pack.”

Transparency Through Flight Summaries

On the right-hand side of the targeting page, advertisers get a flight summary that surfaces essential metrics in real time: impressions, CTR, spend, and clicks. Combined with campaign settings like pacing type, budget duration, and device targeting, this provides clear visibility into how campaigns are structured before launch.

The Impact

By creating this targeting framework, we’ve transformed the way advertisers engage with sponsored products on Weedmaps. Campaigns are now:

• More efficient, reducing wasted spend on irrelevant placements.

• More relevant, connecting cannabis consumers with the exact products they’re looking for.

• More measurable, with instant feedback baked into the campaign setup process.