A 90-day full-funnel programmatic blend of Display, CTV, Pre-Roll, and DOOH drove 229 net-new cannabis shoppers into a Manhattan dispensary — feeding a loyalty program where 96% of store revenue already flows through members and the email engine is returning 127x on every credit spent.
A Manhattan cannabis dispensary sitting in one of the most competitive retail markets in the country needed a way to grow that did not depend on Google, Meta, or walk-in foot traffic. The platforms that most retailers lean on are closed to licensed cannabis advertisers. Retargeting a website visitor list only re-sells to people who already know the brand. And at street level in Manhattan, every block already has a dispensary competing for the same shopper. The question we set out to answer: could a full-funnel programmatic blend of Display, CTV, Pre-Roll, and DOOH bring genuinely new cannabis consumers through the door at a cost that made sense once those shoppers were handed off to budtenders and nurtured into the loyalty program that Gold Standard already operates on the account?
Results at a Glance (90-Day Flight)
Targeted Impressions
1,008,527
Across Display, CTV, Pre-Roll, DOOH
Net-New Shoppers
229
First-time buyers, not retargeting
Programmatic Spend
$12,915.92
Blended 4-channel 90-day flight
Net-New CPA
$54.18
Prospecting placements only
Geo-Conquest Conversions
20
Stolen from nearby competitor foot traffic
Tracked Customer LTV
$67,555
229 shoppers × $295 platform CLTV
All figures pulled directly from the client's programmatic dashboard and Alpine IQ analytics for the trailing 90-day window.
Channel Performance — 90-Day Blend
Each channel played a specific role in the funnel. Display carried the last-touch conversion load. Pre-Roll and CTV built awareness and contributed video-assisted conversions. DOOH put the brand on LinkNYC street-level kiosks for pure top-of-funnel reach.
Display (eComm)
516,430 impressions · 141 conv
CTV (Brand Awareness)
193,731 impressions · 55 conv
Pre-Roll (Brand Awareness)
191,241 impressions · 107 conv
DOOH (LinkNYC Screens)
107,125 impressions · pure reach
Top Net-New Prospecting Placements
The placements that brought first-time shoppers through the door. Retargeting is excluded — this is all new customer acquisition.
Placement
Impressions
Conversions
Attributed Revenue
Cannabis Consumers (Pre-Roll)
Audience · Video
191,241
107
$7,897.40
Cannabis Consumers (CTV)
Audience · Connected TV
193,731
55
$3,818.40
Cannabis Consumers (Display)
Audience · Banner
227,574
47
$2,725.60
Geo-Conquest — Nearby Competitors
Location · Display
171,417
20
$2,789.80
LinkNYC Street-Level Screens
Location · DOOH
107,125
awareness
reach
The Acquisition → Loyalty Flywheel
Programmatic is the intake valve. Every dollar spent at the top of the funnel is designed to hand off a warm shopper to a budtender, then to the loyalty program, then to an email and SMS nurture engine that compounds for the life of the customer. The flywheel, stage by stage:
The Gold Standard Flywheel
Stage 01
Reach
1.01M
Targeted impressions across Display, CTV, Pre-Roll, and DOOH to verified cannabis consumers in Manhattan.
Stage 02
Walk-In
229
Net-new shoppers walked through the door for the first time at a $54.18 CPA — not retargeting, not repeat customers.
Stage 03
Loyalty Join
6,899
New loyalty members added in the same 90-day window across all acquisition sources — a 16% expansion of the entire member base in one quarter.
Stage 04
Email + SMS
127x
Alpine IQ email and SMS ROI on $401 in credits — turning every acquired member into a compounding revenue stream.
Stage 05
LTV
$67,555
Tracked customer lifetime value generated by the programmatic flight, calculated at Alpine IQ's platform CLTV of $295 per member.
The Customer Value Math
From Ad Dollar to Lifetime Value
Net-New Shoppers
229
From the 90-day programmatic flight
×
Platform CLTV
$295
Alpine IQ’s calculated average
=
Tracked LTV Created
$67,555
On $12,915.92 in ad spend
That’s $5.23 in tracked customer lifetime value for every dollar spent on programmatic — and it excludes the compounding value that email, SMS, and repeat visits generate from those same members over the rest of the customer relationship. The dispensary’s loyalty program is currently producing $997,942 in member-attributed revenue every 90 days, meaning every new member joining the program enters a retention engine that has already proven it can monetize the relationship at scale.
Why the Loyalty Program Makes This Work
Member Revenue (90 Days)
$997,942
95.99% of all store revenue
Member Orders (90 Days)
17,345
92.93% of all store orders
Non-Member Revenue
$41,683
Just 4.01% of the total
New Members (90 Days)
6,899
99.2% made a first purchase
Alpine IQ 90-Day ROI
127.8x
$51,305 revenue on $401 credits
Peak Email Open Rate
37.85%
On a single broadcast campaign
Alpine IQ strict-attribution reporting for the matching 90-day window (Last 3 Months filter, member-linked POS data).
What We Did
Built a Full-Funnel Blend, Not a Channel Dump
Every channel in the flight had a specific job. DOOH on LinkNYC kiosks put the brand at street level in the dispensary’s neighborhood trade area — pure awareness with no click expectation. CTV placed video ads on DirecTV, Pluto, FuboTV, and Lifetime during prime cannabis-consumer viewing windows. Pre-Roll ran on NY Post and Page Six to reach local NYC audiences at the mid-funnel. Display then closed the loop with audience-targeted banners and geo-conquest against shoppers near competing dispensaries.
Targeted Verified Cannabis Consumers, Not Generic Interest Audiences
The Cannabis Consumers audience was the primary conversion driver across all four channels — delivering 209 of the 229 net-new conversions. Geo-Conquest of customers at nearby competitors added another 20 conversions at a 2.72x on-platform ROAS, meaning the shoppers who would have walked into another dispensary walked into this one instead.
Handed the Shopper to the Budtender
The programmatic ad gets a shopper through the door. The budtender closes the loyalty sign-up at the point of sale. In this 90-day window, the dispensary added 6,899 new loyalty members across all acquisition sources — and 6,845 of them (99.2%) made a first purchase. This handoff is the single biggest lever in the flywheel, and it is the step most cannabis advertising programs ignore entirely.
Passed the Member to Alpine IQ
Every new loyalty member now enters the email and SMS nurture engine Gold Standard operates on the account. Over the same 90-day window, that engine returned 127.8x ROI on $401 in credit spend and touched $1.25 million of total store revenue through broader-attribution marketing influence. A shopper brought in by programmatic is not a one-time conversion — they are the start of a relationship with a machine that pays the store back every week.
Measured Everything on the Real Window
The programmatic dashboard, the POS, the loyalty program, and Alpine IQ reporting were all pulled on the same 90-day filter and reconciled to a single number: 96% of store revenue flows through members. That single stat is the reason the programmatic investment is worth making. Without the loyalty program at the bottom of the funnel, the ad spend would be a rounding error on the P&L. With it, every shopper becomes a compounding asset.
Key Takeaways
Programmatic works for cannabis retail — but only if it connects to a loyalty program. Running programmatic in isolation gives you first-touch conversions. Running it into a well-built loyalty program gives you lifetime value. This case study is an argument for doing both together, not either one alone.
Net-new is the number that matters. Retargeting re-sells to people who already know you. The business only grows when new cannabis consumers walk through the door for the first time. This flight delivered 229 of them at a $54 CPA.
The budtender is the conversion step. A 99.2% first-purchase rate on new loyalty signups in the same window is not an accident — it is the result of a trained retail team that treats the loyalty sign-up as the real close. Advertising without a strong handoff at the register is wasted spend.
96% of store revenue already flows through the loyalty program. Every new member added to that base enters a proven revenue engine. At $295 in platform-calculated CLTV per member, a $12,915 programmatic flight turned into $67,555 in tracked customer lifetime value — before a single email was sent.
A 127x email ROI compounds the programmatic spend. Alpine IQ is producing 127.8x ROI on marketing credits inside this account. Every new member acquired through programmatic gets folded into that engine, meaning the programmatic spend is really the acquisition cost of a lifetime email subscriber — not the cost of a single transaction.
The platforms that kicked cannabis advertisers off are not the only way to grow. Google and Meta do not run cannabis ads. This account proves that a Display, CTV, Pre-Roll, and DOOH blend with the right audience targeting can deliver a million impressions of genuinely new customers in one of the hardest retail markets in the country.
Want a Flywheel Like This Running on Your Dispensary?
Gold Standard Solutions runs programmatic advertising, loyalty management, and Alpine IQ email and SMS as one integrated system. One team. One flywheel. One set of numbers at the end.