In a significant move for the cannabis industry's digital marketing landscape, Alpine IQ (AIQ) has announced a major upgrade to its advertising platform designed to directly connect consumer impressions with point-of-sale. The Detroit-based data and marketing leader unveiled on January 13, 2026 a new "direct-to-menu" feature for its Loops media product, promising to solve persistent gaps between advertising spend and measurable sales.
Closing the Attribution Gap in Cannabis Marketing
For years, cannabis brands and retailers have faced a fundamental challenge: advertising often created awareness but failed to provide a clear, trackable path to purchase. Media impressions typically ended with the consumer, who then had to independently navigate to a retailer's website or store, breaking the attribution chain. This left marketers in the dark about which campaigns actually drove sales.
Alpine IQ's latest innovation directly addresses this core limitation. The enhanced Loops platform now uses dynamic destination URLs. This means every advertisement impression can be intelligently routed to the specific product page, brand page, or digital menu of a participating retailer. The consumer journey from ad click to purchase intent now happens within the retailer's own ecosystem, eliminating traffic leakage and preserving the retailer's control over the customer experience.
A Full-Funnel, Performance-Driven Solution
This update transforms Loops from a simple media placement tool into what the company calls a "full-funnel, purchase-driving channel." It leverages AIQ's owned communication surfaces—including SMS, email, mobile apps, and ecommerce environments—to reach verified, high-intent cannabis consumers. The key outcomes for stakeholders are clear and measurable.
For cannabis brands, this technology finally unlocks attributable performance marketing at scale. Campaigns can be optimized based on real sales data rather than vague engagement metrics like clicks or views. For retailers, the system ensures customers never leave their digital environment during the shopping journey, increasing the likelihood of conversion and building customer loyalty.
Nicholas Paschal, CEO of AIQ, emphasized the role of artificial intelligence in this evolution. "AI allows us to move customers deeper into the buying journey faster by intelligently routing them to the deepest possible point in a retailer's purchasing funnel," Paschal stated. "By removing friction and converting intent into action, we deliver measurable outcomes, not clicks, across any shopping experience."
Building Trust and Scale in a Regulated Market
The platform's design highlights a critical balance in cannabis commerce: enabling brand reach while maintaining retailer trust. By keeping the final purchase path within the retailer's owned platforms, AIQ assures retail partners that their customer relationships are protected. This addresses a historical friction point that limited retailer participation in third-party media campaigns.
Paschal also highlighted the platform's agnostic nature as a key advantage. "Because we are platform-agnostic, our reach and ROI scale far beyond the limits of POS- or ecommerce-bound systems, creating the highest-ROI marketing channel available at true scale," he explained.
The introduction of direct-to-menu media by Alpine IQ represents a new standard for accountability in cannabis advertising. It provides a solution that delivers high-intent consumer reach, retailer-safe purchase paths, and direct attribution from impression to transaction. In a market hungry for defensible performance reporting, this innovation could significantly shift how cannabis brands allocate their marketing budgets and how retailers partner with external advertisers.
