Because the cannabis industry is so new little consumer data is available that can be used for digital advertising. And programmatic advertising is expensive to use if you don’t have the consumer data to back it up. 

Today, we will meet the team behind NXTeck. They partnered with New Frontier Data and claim to have the largest cannabis consumer database available. They just released a way to track when someone clicks on a digital ad and visits a dispensary to make a purchase. And they can track a mobile device when it enters a dispensary and how long it stays—finally, a method for marketers to truly track digital ad campaigns!

Let’s meet the team behind NXTech, Toby Harwood and Max Moore, to learn more about using targeted cannabis consumer data to improve digital advertising campaigns.

Can you tell us more about the NXTeck and your partnership with New Frontier Data? 

NXTeck is the ad tech division of New Frontier Data which launched in 2020. We saw the opportunity to provide a solution in the US cannabis market that focused on providing cannabis consumer audiences for brands to leverage and use for their digital advertising efforts.

Can you break down how a programmatic ad campaign works and what the various cannabis archetypes are? Which group has the largest consumer base in the United States?

Our data taxonomy has four pieces to it.

The first is about archetypes and profiles. This segment is split between THC and CBD. For example, in THC, there are ten archetypes and ten archetypes inside of those ten archetypes. And 27 individual consumer profiles make up these ten archetypes. It’s a pretty granular consumer profile. 

We’ve got loads of documentation into these archetypes of consumer profiles: age, gender, household income, and all the information you could wish for. 

The second part is about product types. We’re monitoring the purchase behavior in dispensaries through mobile tracking.

We’ve got 10 product segments, including flower, pre-roll, edibles, tinctures, and capsules. Marketers can target users who have bought those products.

The third piece is in and around dispensary visitors. We’ve got these dispensaries mapped, and we’ve got lots of clients utilizing just dispensary visits. You can target users in a campaign who have bought certain products or visited dispensaries in your state over the last month, three months, or the last six months. That’s quite a cool data set. 

The last piece of our taxonomy includes non-endemic groups like a golf course, beauty parlor, or cinema. 

One use case that always comes to mind when discussing these cases is CBD golfer.com. They’ve seen huge success targeting CBD capsules as a product segment and all five CBD archetype segments. 

You asked which segments advertisers buy the most- I would probably have to say THC archetypes are the segments most purchased. Then I would say product segments because of their simplicity and accuracy.

How do you collect and identify your data? 

When we came together to launch NXTeck, we knew we wanted a dataset that would be informed by location and point of sale. So we decided to enter into an exclusive agreement with New Frontier Data because of their relationships with dispensaries and access to their point-of-sale data. This, combined with NXTeck’s consumer data, allowed us to triangulate just shy of about 8000 dispensaries across the states. We can track a mobile device in a dispensary and how long they spend in that dispensary. And, that location data is accurate down to about two to three meters on the ground.

We track and layer about 470 million devices on top of that location data, and we profile 160 million devices into our cannabis and CBD consumer audience segments every month. 

Our data scientists conduct their analysis every month, apply their consumer social science, layer on their methodologies, and populate our predefined segments with 160 million device IDs to complete the loop on this. 

Will there be an issue using your data with the demise of cookies tracking?

That was another factor in our decision to focus on mobile IDs. We have permission to track devices from users who double opt-in through an app install with a location provider. So, we track a device and use the POS transaction data if they purchase a product in a dispensary to create our reports.

Since you’re primarily working off of mobile data, are your services only valuable for dispensaries?

We are seeing that CBD brands prefer e-commerce methods of sales while THC products are purchased in dispensaries and through delivery services. 

We have two distinct offerings to service the CBD and THC brands. We offer Audience Insights reporting for CBD, and on the THC side, we’ve got dispensary analytics with our attribution data tracked through mobile IDs. 

It’s important to note that brands also use our insights for look-alike strategies. If you understand your consumer group, you know, you can target similar personas. 

The reporting also provides valuable insights into how a dispensary performs against its competitors to understand market share better. 

You mentioned earlier that you are launching a new attribution solution. Can you tell us about that?

Yes, we’re excited to have launched the first technology-agnostic attribution solution for the US cannabis market. We can track and report on consumers who either just view or click on an ad online and then consequently visit a dispensary to purchase because of the ad they saw.

We tested our attribution solution with a few multi-state operators, and they experienced solid results attributing to the digital marketing activity. 

For the last question, what trends do you see in the marketplace?

2022 is the year we see CBD and cannabis brands competing for digital ad space. The traditional, first phase of launch into the market is through email marketing or relying on word of mouth, repeat customers, etc. This year, we will see brands go into the next phase of their marketing plan and adopt digital advertising to compete.

We also saw the opportunity for NXTeck to serve the marketers given the advertising restrictions imposed by Google and social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. 

Competitive conquesting is also a real thing at the moment. Everyone wants to find out what’s happening over the fence to understand where the growth places are. And accountability, I think the attribution model we’ve built is market-leading and will help marketers prove campaign ROI.

NXTeck technology certainly helps digital marketers be more efficient by identifying where to spend their ad money. That’s the key.

Interview by Pam Chmiel.

#######

Studio 420 is a cannabis and psychedelics creative agency specializing in branding, UX/UI design, web development, ecommerce, and digital marketing solutions. We offer a variety of services to ELEVATE your online web presence.

Contact our Denver, Colorado office for a no-obligation, project cost analysis at 303-653-9855.