Programmatic advertising has become an attractive option for marketers who want to optimize their return on ad spend (ROAS) in a predictable, scalable way. Whether you’re in the cannabis industry leveraging first-party purchase data or working in a completely different vertical, a ROAS-focused programmatic campaign can help you reach the right audience at the right time, delivering measurable returns. But how long does it typically take to see meaningful results from such a campaign? And what kind of traffic, budget, and strategies are needed to hit that sweet spot in performance?
The short answer: the timeline can vary depending on factors like brand recognition, website traffic, audience quality, creative strategy, and the balance between prospecting and retargeting. But understanding the general milestones and setting realistic expectations can help you feel confident about your investment, even from the earliest stages.
Below, we’ll break down the typical timeframes, talk about why someone might invest in programmatic in the first place, explain the importance of having enough traffic (for example, at least 10,000 monthly users), and look at how those factors influence how quickly you might hit a 3x or higher ROAS. We’ll also run through some math to show how impressions, CPMs, and average order values (AOVs) all come together to shape your results.
Why Consider a ROAS-Focused Programmatic Campaign?
Before jumping into timelines, it’s worth asking: why go programmatic at all? For many marketers, the draw lies in efficiency, targeting precision, and scalability. Instead of serving broad, untargeted ads, programmatic allows you to leverage data—sometimes very specific data, like cannabis purchaser information—to reach highly relevant audiences. If your brand or product aligns with certain consumer behaviors, programmatic can pinpoint those individuals across various websites and apps, ensuring you’re not wasting ad dollars on uninterested audiences.
For businesses in the cannabis space (and beyond), having a reservoir of millions of cannabis purchaser data points can be a game-changer. Imagine being able to serve creative that resonates with a qualified audience likely to engage and convert, regardless of whether they are cannabis consumers or simply individuals with purchasing habits that mirror your ideal customer profile. Even if your product isn’t cannabis-related, this data helps you access lookalike segments or audiences with overlapping interests, effectively boosting campaign efficiency.
Programmatic’s scalability ensures you can test, refine, and grow your campaigns. As the platform learns from which segments respond best, the algorithm can optimize bids, placement, and creative to ensure better ROAS over time. But how much time are we talking about? Let’s break down a realistic timeline.
The Typical Timeline to Results
Weeks 1-2: Initial Setup and Launch
When you first launch a ROAS-focused programmatic campaign, the initial weeks are about laying groundwork. You’ll set up targeting parameters, audiences, and creative variations. The focus here is on ensuring that the technical aspects are in place, pixels are firing correctly, and that your campaign is serving ads to the right audience segments. At this early stage, don’t expect a positive ROAS just yet. The campaign is still gathering baseline data. Conversion events may trickle in, but it’s normal to see metrics like click-through rate (CTR), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), and initial conversion data fluctuate. For an average CTR of about 0.10%, you might just be confirming that the creative and audience alignment is correct.
Weeks 3-4: Data Collection and Early Optimization
By the end of the first month, you have enough performance data to start making intelligent adjustments. This might mean shifting budget toward the creative that yields higher CTR, refining audience segments, and implementing initial negative audience filters if needed. You’ll also start observing where the needle is moving on ROAS. While hitting a 3x ROAS this early might be ambitious, you should begin to see some conversions rolling in, giving you a baseline. Retargeting audiences—especially if you have a steady stream of website traffic—will begin to show their value, as users who have already visited your site are more likely to convert.
Weeks 5-8: Pattern Recognition and More Confident Optimization
Around the six- to eight-week mark, the programmatic platform should have enough learnings to optimize more effectively. You might have tested multiple creatives, refined your targeting toward your top-performing audience segments, and adjusted bids. If your website has at least 10,000 monthly users, retargeting lists are now robust enough that the algorithm can efficiently serve ads to a large pool of warm leads. At this stage, a 2x ROAS may be achievable, and with ongoing refinements, pushing to 3x or beyond becomes increasingly plausible.
Beyond Week 8: Sustaining and Scaling
Once you’ve passed the two-month mark and have made incremental improvements based on performance data, your ROAS-focused programmatic campaign often hits its stride. With continuous testing and refinement, the 3x or higher ROAS milestone may be well within reach. As you scale budget, broaden or narrow targeting based on performance, and introduce fresh creative, you can maintain and even improve ROAS over time.
Factors That Influence the Timeline
1. Website Traffic
Your site’s monthly user count is critical to how quickly you can see results. For instance, if you have at least 10,000 monthly users, you have a decent “seed” audience for retargeting. With a larger audience, retargeting becomes more efficient: you don’t need as many initial impressions to drive conversions because the people seeing your ads have already engaged with your brand. This efficiency speeds up the timeline to a strong ROAS.
If you have fewer than 10,000 monthly users, that means smaller retargeting pools. The platform must rely more on prospecting—serving ads to new users who may not yet trust or understand your brand. That naturally takes longer to produce a favorable ROAS, as you’re essentially educating a cold audience before converting them. The timeline for hitting a strong ROAS could extend beyond the eight-week mark due to the longer nurturing cycle.
2. Brand Recognition
If your brand is well-known—say you’re already an established cannabis-related retailer with a loyal following—you start with a leg up. High brand recognition can compress the timeline significantly. People familiar with your brand are more likely to click and convert, which improves metrics quickly. Even in just a few weeks, you could start seeing a respectable ROAS because the ads serve as reminders rather than introductions.
In contrast, if you’re an emerging brand with low recognition, it takes longer for users to trust you. You might need a period of “brand building” before serious conversions kick in. While this extended runway may delay hitting 3x ROAS, each incremental improvement in brand familiarity helps in the long run.
3. Audience Quality and Data
When you tap into highly relevant audience data—like a trove of cannabis purchaser profiles—you shortcut the trial-and-error phase. From the start, your ads target individuals who have exhibited purchase behaviors in your category. High-quality audiences accelerate the learning curve, narrowing the gap between launch and measurable returns. Even if your brand is new, if you’re aiming your ads at a known high-value audience, you’ll likely see better-than-average performance within the first month, speeding up your path to strong ROAS.
4. Creative and Messaging
The strength of your ad creative can influence how fast you achieve results. Eye-catching visuals, compelling product offerings, and relevant messaging all improve CTR and conversion rates. During the first few weeks, you’ll likely test multiple creatives. If you identify a winning combination early, you can pour more budget into it, raising ROAS sooner. If the first round of creative is lackluster, it may take longer to refine and see returns.
Example Scenario: Monthly Budget and Impressions
Let’s put some math behind these concepts. Imagine a $2,500 monthly ad budget with a $7 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). With a $7 CPM, $2,500 buys you approximately:
At a 0.10% CTR, 357,000 impressions yield about 357 clicks:
Now let’s consider conversions. Conversion rates vary widely based on your product, site experience, and audience quality. If your conversion rate is around 3% (just for example) on those 357 clicks, you’d see about 10-11 conversions per month:
If your average order value (AOV) is between $70 and $120, let’s pick $100 to simplify. That means your revenue from those conversions is about:
With $2,500 spent, that equates to a ROAS of about 0.43x initially. Clearly, that’s not where you want to land long-term. This early on, it’s a baseline.
But here’s where traffic and optimization come into play. If you have a large retargeting audience because you have 10,000+ monthly users, you won’t need to waste nearly as many impressions on “cold” audiences. Retargeting tends to have higher conversion rates. Instead of a 3% conversion rate, retargeting might push it higher. Perhaps a well-optimized retargeting approach doubles the conversion rate to 6%. With the same 357 clicks, that’s now about 21-22 conversions at $100 AOV, or roughly $2,100 in revenue—already closer to a ROAS of 0.84x. Still not 3x, but you’re moving in the right direction.
As the weeks progress and the algorithm refines targeting, you might find even better audience segments, such as past cannabis purchasers who consistently convert at an even higher rate. Let’s say after several weeks of optimization, your blended conversion rate (prospecting + retargeting) improves to 10%. With the same 357 clicks, that’s about 35-36 conversions, equating to roughly $3,500 in revenue. Now you’re at a ROAS of about 1.4x.
Given more time—say two or three months—your campaign might allocate budget more efficiently, dedicating more spend to retargeting known, high-value users and less to broad prospecting. As brand recognition increases (especially if your product resonates), conversion rates can climb further. If you eventually push conversion rates to 15% among a mix of new and returning users, that’s about 53-54 conversions at $100 AOV, or roughly $5,300 in revenue. Now you’ve broken past that 2x ROAS (approximately 2.12x), moving closer to 3x.
To achieve a 3x ROAS or higher, you might also test different creatives, adjust your landing pages, and refine your product offerings. The improvements tend to be cumulative. After several months and multiple rounds of optimization, a 3x ROAS is quite possible, particularly if you’re leveraging robust retargeting lists and high-quality audience data from cannabis purchasers or other niche segments.
High Traffic vs. Low Traffic: The Impact on Impressions Needed
High-traffic websites have a big advantage. If your site sees well above 10,000 monthly users, your retargeting pool quickly fills up with people who have already shown interest. You won’t need 357,000 impressions just to find that initial set of engaged prospects; a good chunk of your impressions can go straight to people who are already “warm.”
For instance, imagine a high-traffic site that easily garners 50,000 monthly users. This large user base creates a robust retargeting list sooner. The CTR might still be 0.10%, but the conversion rate on retargeting might jump to 10% or higher right away. Because many of these users know your brand, fewer impressions are needed to achieve the same number of high-quality clicks. You might need, for example, fewer total impressions to drive the number of conversions needed for a strong ROAS.
Conversely, if your site has fewer than 10,000 users per month, you’ll be spending a larger percentage of your impressions on cold prospecting—trying to find new customers who are completely unfamiliar with your brand. It takes more impressions and more time to turn these new prospects into converters. That’s why low-traffic websites often see their ROAS improve more slowly.
This difference boils down to brand familiarity and audience quality. High-traffic sites have a steady stream of interested people who just need a nudge, while low-traffic sites must first introduce themselves and build trust. Over time, even a low-traffic website can increase its monthly visitors, especially if the product resonates and marketing efforts are coordinated (for example, SEO, email marketing, and social media alongside programmatic). As traffic grows, so does the retargeting pool, and the timeline to reach a high ROAS compresses.
Balancing Prospecting and Retargeting for Quicker Results
A key strategy in ROAS-focused campaigns is balancing prospecting (finding new users) with retargeting (reaching users who already know you). Early in a campaign, you’ll likely do more prospecting to build brand awareness and widen the top of your funnel. But as time goes on, shifting more budget to retargeting known users can skyrocket ROAS because these individuals are closer to conversion.
In the cannabis purchaser example, once you’ve identified segments of users who have shown a high likelihood to buy, you can create retargeting pools specifically for them. This could include users who visited product pages but didn’t buy, or shoppers who previously converted and might be ready to re-purchase. By nurturing these segments, you improve your conversion rates and ROAS faster than if you only focused on cold audiences.
That said, you can’t neglect prospecting altogether. Without a continuous stream of new users entering the funnel, your retargeting pool will eventually stagnate. The trick is to find that sweet spot: use prospecting to keep growing your audience while relying on retargeting to push ROAS higher over time.
Setting Expectations Based on Traffic and Brand Stage
For High-Traffic Websites (10,000+ Monthly Users):
- Month 1: Establish baselines, run initial prospecting and retargeting. Start to see early conversions but may not achieve desired ROAS yet.
- Month 2: Significant optimization opportunities. Retargeting is more effective, pushing conversion rates and ROAS up. Possibly reach 1-2x ROAS.
- Month 3+: As the algorithm refines targeting and creative, a 3x ROAS or better becomes more attainable. High-traffic sites that leverage robust retargeting data often see strong results by this point.
For Low-Traffic Websites (Fewer Than 10,000 Monthly Users):
- Month 1: Mostly prospecting. Low initial ROAS. Focus is on building brand awareness and slowly growing a retargeting pool.
- Month 2: With some retargeting now available, start to see ROAS improve, though it may still be under 1x.
- Month 3+: Continued optimization, better audience segmentation, and improved creatives gradually lift ROAS. Might take a few extra months to hit 3x ROAS, but consistent improvement should be visible.
Practical Tips to Shorten the Timeline to Strong ROAS
Leverage High-Quality Data: If you have access to millions of cannabis purchaser data points, use them. Pinpoint these valuable audiences immediately to skip the slow phase of generic prospecting.
Optimize Creative Early: Test multiple ad creatives from the start. Identify winners quickly and allocate more budget to what works. Good creative can boost CTR and conversion rates, speeding up the path to a healthy ROAS.
Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate: Don’t rely solely on programmatic targeting. Ensure your landing pages load fast, your product pages are easy to navigate, and your checkout process is smooth. Every improvement on your site’s user experience helps raise conversion rates, ultimately improving ROAS.
Increase Traffic Quality: If possible, run parallel marketing efforts (such as influencer marketing, email campaigns, or SEO) to increase the volume of monthly users. More traffic means bigger retargeting pools and quicker ROAS gains.
Set Realistic Expectations: While the goal might be a 3x ROAS, recognize that it often takes a few cycles of data collection and optimization. If you start seeing incremental improvements in CTR, conversion rate, and ROAS each month, you’re on the right track.
A Positive Outlook on the Timeline
Programmatic advertising offers a scalable and highly targeted way to grow your brand’s revenue. While achieving a strong ROAS—like 3x or more—may not happen in the first few weeks, the incremental improvements add up. By leveraging robust data sets (like those from cannabis purchasers), refining creative, optimizing your funnel, and balancing prospecting with retargeting, you can shorten the timeline to meaningful results.
Seeing some initial returns usually begins in the first month or two. As brand familiarity grows, targeting improves, and retargeting lists fill out, your ROAS should steadily climb. High-traffic websites tend to reach strong ROAS milestones more quickly because they can rely heavily on retargeting. But even low-traffic sites can eventually see strong results by steadily improving their audience quality and funnel performance.
If your brand is new or less recognized, a slightly longer timeframe may be expected. However, as awareness grows and you refine your approach, the impact of your programmatic campaign will become more evident. Over time, you’ll move from incremental improvements to sustained, positive returns.
