Cannabis Advertising Compliance Built Into the Workflow

Age-gating and audience restrictions for weed and vape advertising

Most cannabis advertising rules require confirming an audience skews adult before certain creative can run, and platforms enforce their own age and interest targeting on top of state law. We apply age-gating and audience thresholds at the platform level for SMS, email, and paid social, and document the settings used per campaign in case a record is ever needed.

We're upfront about platform limits too: Google and Meta prohibit direct advertising of THC products, full stop, regardless of state legality. We build campaigns that work within those platform policies rather than around them.

Creative review before dispensary and cannabis brand ads go live

Every piece of paid creative — social ads, SMS copy, email, landing pages — passes through a review checklist matched to the destination state's current rules before launch. That checklist covers claims language, required disclaimers, imagery restrictions, and platform policy conflicts.

For hemp and CBD product lines that cross into general retail advertising, we track that these products often face a separate set of FTC and platform rules from state-licensed THC products, and we review them against both.

Compliance as infrastructure, not a one-time audit

Rules change as states update cannabis programs, so a one-time compliance review goes stale fast. We treat this as an ongoing part of campaign production — updated when a state changes a rule, when a platform updates ad policy, or when you enter a new market.

Practically, that means a living rule sheet per market: who you may target, what you may claim, which warnings must appear, how far a fence may sit from a school, and what a menu page can say about potency. Creative templates inherit those constraints, so a designer cannot accidentally ship a non-conforming asset. When a rule moves, we update the sheet, re-check anything live against it, and log the change with a date so you have a record of what was running and why.

We also structure accounts defensively. Separate ad accounts by entity and product line, keep hemp and THC assets apart, and keep a documented appeal path ready, so one policy strike never takes your entire presence offline.

This work sits underneath everything else we build for a brand, from branding and web design to SMS and paid social, so a new market launch doesn't start from a blank compliance sheet.