Restricted-vertical marketing in 2026: the playbook agencies don't publish

TL;DR Most agencies refuse restricted-industry clients because the operational risk is real: Meta will ban your ad account, Stripe will pause your payments, your reputation gets dragged sideways by the first compliance complaint. The flip side: the businesses that need this work most are the ones generalist agencies won't take, and the few firms that do this competently can charge a 30–50% premium because they're the only options. This guide is the playbook we run for kratom, cannabis, firearms, vape, and adult-industry clients — including the platform-by-platform compliance matrix, the four channels that actually work when paid platforms decline you, the infrastructure (payment processors, ESPs, shipping) that won't blow up mid-engagement, and a first-person operator note from running 4 Leaf Herbals through every restriction in the book.

What "restricted industry" actually means

A restricted industry is one where the major customer-acquisition platforms — Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, Stripe, Shopify, Klaviyo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, mainstream banking — apply category-specific policies that either prohibit advertising outright, gate it behind verification, or quietly de-prioritize the account in ways that look like normal performance decline. The seven industries we hear about most often:

1. Kratom — federally legal (FDA pending, DEA not scheduled), but Meta and Google both prohibit ads. Stripe terminates accounts on review. Klaviyo permits with restrictions. Most banks decline ACH.
2. Cannabis — state-by-state legal (24 states recreational, 38 medical as of 2026), federally Schedule I. Meta and Google block ads. Banking is patchwork (state-chartered credit unions only in some markets).
3. Firearms — federally legal under specific commerce rules (FFL required for interstate, age-gated, ATF-regulated). Meta prohibits ads on firearms but permits accessories conditionally. Google prohibits sales-intent ads entirely. Major payment processors (PayPal, Square, Venmo) refuse the category.
4. Vape / e-cigarette / nicotine — federally regulated under FDA's deeming rule. Meta prohibits all paid promotion. Google permits only in jurisdictions where regulators have approved. PMTA-approved products only since 2022.
5. Adult industry — federally legal (18 USC §2257 compliant). All major mainstream platforms prohibit. Adult-specific networks (TrafficStars, JuicyAds, ExoClick) take this work.
6. Online pharmacy / telehealth — DEA-regulated for controlled substances, state-regulated for telehealth licensure. LegitScript verification required for Google.
7. Online gambling / sweepstakes / DFS — state-by-state legal. Paid social patchwork. Meta requires written authorization.

Plus the gray-area verticals: payday lending, debt-relief services, MLMs, supplements with health claims, "natural cures," kratom-adjacent botanicals (kava, mitragyna, conolidine), CBD with THC content over federal threshold. These all get caught in the same enforcement net even when the underlying business is legal.

This guide focuses on the first five — the ones with the largest revenue opportunity, the clearest legal status (state-permitting), and the operating patterns that repeat across them.

Why most agencies refuse this work

Every generalist agency that has tried restricted-industry work and quit will give you the same three reasons:

1. The Meta Business Manager ban. If you run a kratom or cannabis ad campaign from your agency's main BM, and a single ad gets flagged, Meta sometimes bans the agency's BM — not just the client's ad account. That cascades to every other client's campaigns on that BM. One bad restricted-industry creative can take down a $10M ad-spend portfolio.

2. The payment processor risk. If you're invoicing a restricted-industry client through Stripe and Stripe reviews your account, they sometimes terminate the agency's processor relationship on the spot. The agency loses payments from every client. This happens 2–4 times a year in our industry — quietly, no public postmortems, agencies pretend it never happened.

3. The reputational drag. Generalist agencies sell to enterprise buyers. Showing up at a HubSpot conference as "the agency that does kratom" closes doors. Agencies that take this work tend to be either purpose-built for restricted verticals or operator-led firms where the founder personally accepts the social cost.

The math on whether to take this work: the premium you can charge (30–50% above standard tier) plus the long retention (these clients have nowhere else to go) usually offsets the operational overhead. But only if you've operationalized the risk mitigations below.

The platform-by-platform compliance matrix

This is the table that took us 90 days of testing to build. Update quarterly; platforms shift their enforcement without notice.

Meta (Facebook + Instagram)

| Vertical | Paid ads | Organic page allowed | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Kratom | ❌ Prohibited | ✓ With restrictions | Page can describe products but cannot link to checkout in posts | | Cannabis | ❌ Prohibited (all forms) | ⚠️ Conditional | Dispensaries can have a page in legal states with explicit non-sale framing | | Firearms | ❌ Prohibited (sales) | ✓ Accessories OK | Holsters, slings, optics, eyewear all permitted in feed if not paired with the firearm | | Vape | ❌ Prohibited | ⚠️ Age-gated organic | Cannot advertise but can run age-gated brand pages | | Adult | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Pages get removed on first review |

Operating tactic: for kratom + cannabis specifically, we run cause campaigns rather than commerce campaigns. A "support kratom legalization" lead-gen campaign with no product mention is approvable. The lead list then flows into Klaviyo for the actual commerce nurture, which is allowed because Klaviyo isn't ad-policy-restricted in the same way.

Google Ads (Search + Display + YouTube)

| Vertical | Search ads | Display ads | YouTube ads | Notes | |---|---|---|---|---| | Kratom | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | "Other restricted business" categorization | | Cannabis | ⚠️ State-gated | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | CBD with verified <0.3% THC OK in approved states with LegitScript | | Firearms | ❌ Prohibited (sales) | ⚠️ Accessories | ⚠️ Accessories | Search prohibits "buy firearm" intent entirely; accessories can target informational keywords | | Vape | ⚠️ Country-gated | ⚠️ Country-gated | ⚠️ Country-gated | Tobacco policy applies; FDA-approved e-cig brands can sometimes get approvals via Google Ads support | | Adult | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Categorical |

Operating tactic: the highest-ROI Google channel for restricted verticals is organic SEO, not paid. We treat the SEO budget as effectively the paid-acquisition budget for these accounts. Investing the same monthly dollars into content + technical SEO + link acquisition outperforms most non-restricted-industry paid ads on a 12-month basis because there's less competition for non-paid placements in these categories.

TikTok Ads

| Vertical | TopView + In-Feed | Spark Ads | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Kratom | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Even brand-only ads get flagged | | Cannabis | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Categorical | | Firearms | ❌ Prohibited | ⚠️ Accessories | Same accessories carveout as Meta | | Vape | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Tobacco policy | | Adult | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Plus account ban risk |

Operating tactic: TikTok's organic algorithm doesn't enforce the same advertising policies. A kratom or cannabis brand can have a popular organic TikTok presence even though it can't buy ads — and the algorithm will surface that content to genuinely interested viewers. The strategy: skip paid TikTok entirely, invest the budget into organic-content production (one daily posting cadence, founder-led talking-head video, behind-the-scenes content) and let the algorithm do the distribution.

X (Twitter)

| Vertical | Paid posts | Promoted accounts | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Kratom | ⚠️ Conditional | ⚠️ Conditional | Loosened in 2024; case-by-case | | Cannabis | ⚠️ Conditional | ⚠️ Conditional | Same loosening | | Firearms | ✓ Permitted | ✓ Permitted | Most permissive major platform | | Vape | ⚠️ Country-gated | ⚠️ Country-gated | Country specifics | | Adult | ✓ Permitted (NSFW gated) | ✓ Permitted | Notable: only major platform that allows |

Operating tactic: X is the one mainstream platform where firearms and adult clients can run normal paid acquisition. For those two verticals, we shift roughly 40% of the paid budget there. ROAS on X paid for firearms is currently better than what Meta would deliver if Meta allowed it — fewer advertisers competing for the audience.

Reddit Ads

| Vertical | Promoted posts | Subreddit targeting | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Kratom | ✓ Permitted | ✓ Permitted | r/kratom is a real community; ads relevant | | Cannabis | ⚠️ State-gated | ⚠️ State-gated | Similar to Google's approach | | Firearms | ⚠️ Conditional | ⚠️ Conditional | Accessories generally OK | | Vape | ❌ Prohibited | ❌ Prohibited | Tobacco policy | | Adult | ❌ Prohibited (mostly) | ❌ Prohibited | NSFW subreddit targeting was disabled in 2023 |

Operating tactic: Reddit is the secret weapon of kratom marketing. The kratom subreddit is one of the largest active product subreddits on the platform, with members who actively review brands and recommend retailers. Sponsored posts that are genuinely useful (not salesy) consistently outperform Meta's CPL in our cohort by 40–60%.

Pinterest, Snap, LinkedIn

Pinterest prohibits all five restricted categories outright. Snap permits firearms accessories (no firearms themselves), prohibits the rest. LinkedIn prohibits all five — and additionally flags B2B-positioning attempts (e.g., "marketing for kratom retailers" promoted to agency-buyer audiences) on a case-by-case basis.

Operating tactic for these three: organic presence only. Pinterest is genuinely useful for cannabis-adjacent lifestyle brands (CBD wellness, hemp accessories, glassware) in organic form. Snap is irrelevant for these verticals. LinkedIn is useful for the agency-side B2B positioning — "we market for restricted verticals" — but not for the client's customer acquisition.

State-by-state legal status (US)

This section moves faster than any other in the guide — laws change quarterly. The summary below reflects the snapshot as of mid-2026; verify current status against the relevant state agency before scoping any client engagement.

Kratom legal status:

• Banned: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. Several jurisdictions within otherwise-legal states (Sarasota County FL, San Diego CA, some Mississippi counties) have local bans.
• Restricted (age + labeling): Tennessee (21+, KPCA-registered vendors only), Georgia (18+), Nevada (KCPA), Florida (21+ statewide since 2023), Indiana adjacent.
• Legal with KCPA-style consumer protection: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia.
• Otherwise legal: All other states without explicit restriction. FDA has not scheduled mitragyna speciosa federally; DEA's 2016 attempt was withdrawn after public pushback.

Cannabis legal status:

• Recreational + medical legal: AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, IL, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NV, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OR, RI, VA, VT, WA, DC. (25 jurisdictions as of mid-2026.)
• Medical only: AL, AR, FL, GA, HI, IA, IN, KY, LA, MS, NC, ND, NH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV. (21 states.)
• CBD only with restrictions: GA, IA, ID, KS, NE, WI, WY.
• No legal commerce: Federal — schedule I, 2018 Farm Bill carveout for <0.3% THC hemp products. Marketing campaigns crossing state lines must respect destination-state law.

Firearms legal status:

• Federally regulated: GCA, FFL system, NICS, ATF Form 4473. State variations cover sale waiting periods, magazine capacity, "assault weapon" definitions, concealed carry permitting.
• Strict states: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, Oregon.
• Permissive states: Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, plus most Southeast.
• Implications for marketing: ad creative for the strict states cannot show certain products that are legal in permissive states. Geo-targeted creative variants required.

Vape / e-cig legal status:

• FDA PMTA — only products with Premarket Tobacco Application approval can legally be marketed since 2022. Many small-batch and disposable vape products are still selling illegally in the US market; marketing them at all is regulatorily fraught.
• State flavor bans: Several states (Massachusetts, California, New York) ban flavored vape products. Marketing of flavored products is prohibited in those states even if the product is shipped elsewhere.

Adult industry legal status:

• 18 USC §2257 — recordkeeping requirements for performers' age verification. Studios must maintain records and make them available to inspectors.
• State age restrictions: many states have age-verification laws for adult-content access (Louisiana, Utah, Texas, Virginia, others). Marketing campaigns must comply with these on a state-targeted basis.
• Banking: nearly all mainstream banks decline. Adult-specific banking (CCBill, Verotel, RocketGate) is the operational standard.

The four channels that actually work

When mainstream paid channels are mostly closed, what's left? Four channel categories carry restricted-vertical revenue:

1. Organic search (SEO)

The biggest, least-talked-about restricted-vertical channel. Google's advertising policies prohibit ads in these categories, but Google's organic search indexes them freely. Strong content + technical SEO + ethical link acquisition pulls in qualified buyer-intent traffic at zero CPL.

The playbook:

• Topic-cluster content around the buyer-intent queries: "what is [product]," "best [product] for X," "[product] vs [alternative]," "buy [product] in [state]." Each cluster has a pillar guide and 4–8 supporting articles linking up to it.
• Local SEO for in-store retailers: Google Business Profile, locally-optimized landing pages per location, citations on local directories.
• Long-tail product pages with schema markup so each product is independently indexable and rich-result-eligible.
• Link acquisition via guest posts on industry-trade publications, sponsorships of harm-reduction or community-health organizations (for kratom + cannabis), partnerships with relevant podcasts.

Budget allocation: typically 40–60% of total acquisition budget for restricted verticals.

2. Email + SMS (transactional + nurture)

Klaviyo and Postscript are the two ESPs that actively permit restricted-industry work — with some restrictions. Klaviyo requires explicit opt-in language and prohibits abandoned-cart automation that's "too aggressive" for restricted categories, but otherwise treats these accounts normally.

The playbook:

• Welcome flow that respects the category (no "buy now or miss out" pressure for kratom + cannabis; educational content first).
• Browse-abandon sequences hitting the soft-CTA on the second touch.
• Replenishment flows triggered at the typical reorder window per product.
• VIP / loyalty tier that captures repeat buyers — restricted-vertical customer LTV is often 2-3x higher than mainstream because there's less competition for the wallet.
• SMS for in-stock alerts, restock notifications, and (with explicit double opt-in) member-only flash promotions.

Budget allocation: 15–25% of total acquisition budget; this is where retention compounds.

3. Native + content advertising

Outbrain, Taboola, Sharethrough, and other content-discovery networks permit some restricted-vertical work that programmatic display networks refuse. Sponsored content placement on niche publications (Marijuana Moment for cannabis, AmericanKratom for kratom, AmmoLand for firearms, etc.) carries authority and zero-headwind.

The playbook:

• Sponsored editorial on category-relevant publications — not banner ads, full editorial pieces with disclosure.
• Native ads that look like the surrounding content but are clearly labeled.
• Influencer partnerships with creators in the vertical — micro-influencers (10k–100k followers) tend to be more accessible and have higher engagement than mainstream lifestyle influencers.

Budget allocation: 15–25%.

4. Direct mail + out-of-home

For the most-restricted categories (adult, kratom, firearms in strict states), direct mail and out-of-home are the channels that don't have policy committees deciding whether you're allowed. Costs are higher per touch but the ROAS on a controlled list is often surprising.

The playbook:

• Direct mail to a curated list (current customers, lapsed customers, lookalike audiences acquired via mailing-list brokers).
• Out-of-home in geographically-permitted markets (digital billboards in Las Vegas for kratom; in-store displays at affiliated retailers; magazine inserts in category-specific publications).
• Event presence at industry trade shows — Hempcon for cannabis, SHOT Show for firearms, the AKA convention for kratom retailers.

Budget allocation: 10–20% depending on category. Firearms tends to over-index here because of the strong "in-person research, in-person purchase" pattern at gun stores.

Infrastructure that won't blow up mid-engagement

Marketing budget is half the problem. The other half is the operational stack — the payment processors, ESPs, shipping carriers, banks, and tax-handling services — that have to not break for the business to keep running.

Payment processing

| Processor | Kratom | Cannabis | Firearms | Vape | Adult | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Stripe | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Square | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | PayPal | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | | Authorize.net | ⚠️ Sometimes | ❌ | ⚠️ Sometimes | ❌ | ❌ | | NMI | ⚠️ Underwriting-dependent | ❌ | ✓ | ❌ | ❌ | | Easy Pay Direct | ✓ | ⚠️ State-dependent | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Maverick BankCard | ✓ | ⚠️ | ✓ | ✓ | ❌ | | CCBill / Verotel | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✓ | | State-chartered credit unions | ⚠️ | ✓ (specific) | ✓ | ⚠️ | ❌ |

Operating tactic: always have a backup processor configured before your first restricted-vertical client signs. If the primary terminates, the backup activates within 24h — not 14 days while you scramble. This single risk-mitigation has saved us from outages on two client engagements in 18 months.

Email service providers

| ESP | Kratom | Cannabis | Firearms | Vape | Adult | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Klaviyo | ✓ With restrictions | ⚠️ State-dependent | ✓ | ⚠️ | ⚠️ | | Mailchimp | ❌ | ❌ | ⚠️ Accessories | ❌ | ❌ | | Postscript (SMS) | ✓ With restrictions | ⚠️ | ✓ | ❌ | ❌ | | ConvertKit | ⚠️ Accept-by-review | ❌ | ⚠️ | ❌ | ❌ | | Customer.io | ✓ | ⚠️ | ✓ | ⚠️ | ⚠️ | | Sailthru | ✓ | ⚠️ | ✓ | ⚠️ | ⚠️ |

Operating tactic: Klaviyo is the default for e-commerce restricted clients; Postscript for SMS. Either can be replaced if their policy shifts. Avoid Mailchimp for any restricted-vertical work — they terminate accounts faster than recovery is possible.

Shipping + logistics

• USPS ships kratom, accessories, and some restricted products. Will not ship firearms or live ammunition to consumers.
• UPS ships kratom and accessories; firearms only with FFL-to-FFL service.
• FedEx ships kratom and accessories; firearms with restrictions; ammunition no.
• Cannabis — interstate commerce is federally illegal. Intrastate-only courier networks exist in legal states (FlowHub, Onfleet, Treez).

Tax handling

Restricted verticals often have category-specific sales tax obligations beyond the standard state sales tax. Kratom is taxed as a herbal supplement in some states, as a specialty consumable in others. Cannabis has excise taxes layered on top of sales tax that can reach 30% in California. Firearms have federal excise tax (FAET — 10% or 11% depending on category). The accounting setup needs to handle these without choking on the first audit. We use Avalara for everything except firearms (which uses a specialty solution from National Firearms Sales Tax Compliance).

Hosting + DNS

Restricted-vertical clients shouldn't host on the same Vercel/Netlify/Cloudflare account as mainstream clients. We use separate Vercel projects per restricted-vertical client (and sometimes separate Cloudflare accounts) so a hosting-provider policy change for one category doesn't cascade across the portfolio. The marginal cost of separate accounts is low; the cascading-failure risk avoided is meaningful.

How we actually run these engagements

The structure of a restricted-vertical engagement looks different from a mainstream one.

Month 0 — pre-engagement risk mapping. Before signing, we walk through the platform-policy and payment-processor landscape with the client. We identify the channels that are open, the channels that are closed, the channels that require operational hardening before they can be used. We surface the worst-case scenarios — "Stripe terminates, what's your fallback" — so they're decisions made before the work starts, not crises mid-engagement.

Month 1 — infrastructure hardening. We don't run a single paid campaign in month 1 of a restricted-vertical engagement. Instead, we set up:

• Separate Meta BM (so a category ban doesn't cascade)
• Backup payment processor configured + tested
• Klaviyo account configured for the category's restrictions
• DNS + hosting separated from mainstream-vertical workload
• Compliance documentation for the operating jurisdictions

Month 2-3 — content + organic foundation. Topic-cluster SEO build-out, Google Business Profile (where applicable), site content optimized for buyer-intent queries, three to four sponsored editorial placements on category-relevant publications. The goal: by month 3 the organic-search and earned-media flywheels are spinning.

Month 3-6 — paid layered on top. Whichever paid channels are open (X paid for firearms; native + content for kratom; organic-only for the most-restricted) start running at modest budgets. We optimize against actual revenue, not platform-reported conversion data — because attribution is unreliable on these accounts and the platforms aren't above marking conversions as "low-quality" to slow down a category they don't want to support.

Month 6+ — diversification + LTV optimization. Email + SMS flows are mature, customer-retention-rate is the dominant metric, paid spend stops being the primary revenue lever. If the engagement has worked, by month 6 the client is significantly less dependent on any single channel — which is the resilience pattern that protects them when another platform policy shifts in month 9.

Operator note: running 4 Leaf Herbals

Before this agency, I built and run 4 Leaf Herbals — a kratom and herbal-product retail brand based in Florida. Every restriction in the table above, I've felt personally. The Meta ban on the brand's first ad campaign. The Stripe account hold the third month in. The bank's three-week underwriting review of a credit union that finally agreed to take the deposit account. The vendor who refused shipping after their compliance team caught the product category. The TikTok account that gathered 80k followers organically and was suddenly shadow-banned the day a kratom-policy article ran in The Atlantic.

This is the part I think generalist agencies are missing when they price restricted-vertical work like it's a 10% surcharge: the operational tempo of these engagements is faster and more interrupt-driven than mainstream work. A standard SaaS or DTC client might have one platform-policy event per quarter. A kratom or cannabis client has one per month, sometimes per week. The agency that takes this work has to be staffed and structured for the interrupt cadence — which means it costs us more to run than mainstream work even if the deliverables look superficially similar.

What we charge for: not just "we'll run your Meta ads." It's "we'll absorb the operational risk of Meta banning your ad account, route around it within 48 hours, keep your acquisition funnel running on the four channels that are open, and rebuild any platform presence we lose as a learning input rather than a crisis." That posture is what restricted-vertical clients actually buy.

Three concrete things I learned running 4 Leaf Herbals that I now apply to every restricted-vertical client we sign:

1. The customer LTV is higher than the spreadsheet suggests. Kratom buyers (and cannabis, and firearms enthusiasts, and adult-industry customers) have fewer alternatives, more loyalty, and repeat at higher rates than mainstream e-commerce categories. The "CPL cap" math that works for a standard DTC business under-estimates what you can spend to acquire a restricted-vertical customer profitably. We routinely see 18-month LTV at 4–6x first-purchase value vs. mainstream's 1.5–2.5x.

2. Organic content compounds harder. Because paid is constrained, organic content carries more of the load — and because more of the load is on organic, every piece of content that works compounds further. The same topic-cluster SEO investment produces more downstream revenue in a restricted vertical than in a competitive mainstream category, because there are fewer competing pieces ranking for the same queries.

3. Community is the moat. The kratom community is real — there are forums, subreddits, podcasts, conventions, a national trade organization, and a thick layer of independent harm-reduction advocates. Brands that engage authentically with the community get a competitive advantage that no amount of paid acquisition can replicate. Same pattern for firearms (training, range communities), cannabis (cultivation, harm-reduction), and the others. Mainstream agencies don't know how to operate inside these communities. Operator-led agencies do.

FAQ

Will you take a kratom client right now? Yes. Onboarding takes 2–3 weeks for infrastructure setup before we run any campaigns. Engagements start at Growth tier ($3,000/mo + ad spend) due to the operational overhead. Restricted-vertical engagements have a +30% surcharge over the published tier.

What if my state bans my product mid-engagement? We rebuild the geo-targeting and shift to legal-state customer acquisition. If the entire US market is impacted (federal-level policy change, FDA action), we discuss whether to continue the engagement or pause. We've never had to pause an engagement entirely for this reason — but the contracts allow for 30-day off-ramp if it happens.

Can you guarantee I won't get banned from Meta? No. Anyone who guarantees that is lying. What we can do is structure the engagement so that if a ban happens, the rest of the funnel continues running and we have a documented playbook to rebuild platform presence. The right metric isn't "platform ban rate" — it's "revenue continuity through a platform ban."

Will working with you damage your other clients? No. We use separate Meta BMs, separate Google Ads MCC accounts, separate payment processor relationships, separate hosting environments, and separate physical office space (figuratively — we're remote). The internal infrastructure isolation means a policy event on one client account doesn't cascade.

Do you publish a client list? No. Restricted-vertical clients almost always require confidentiality — naming them publicly affects their own ability to get banking, hosting, and ad-platform relationships. We can provide blind-references from current clients with their explicit consent, but the client list isn't published.

What about industries you've named that aren't in this guide (online pharmacy, gambling, MLMs, payday)? We take case-by-case engagements in those verticals when the business is operating legally and we can structure the work within our risk envelope. The infrastructure and channel playbook is similar to the five primary verticals; the legal-status matrix is what varies.

Can I see the underlying compliance matrix as a downloadable file? Yes. The full quarterly-updated matrix (platform × vertical × policy status, with policy-URL citations and last-verified date) is available to active engagements. We've also published a public-facing snapshot: the Restricted-Industry Ad-Policy Matrix (2026), re-verified quarterly.

When to engage us

If you're operating in one of the five restricted verticals named here, with current monthly revenue in the $30k–$5M range, and you've already lost an ad account or had a payment processor terminate you, we're probably the right call. If you're pre-launch, the operating math may not work yet — we'd point you at the infrastructure setup steps in this guide and suggest revisiting once you have $30k MRR. If you're operating outside the legal envelope (selling in states where the category is banned, no PMTA approval for vape products, illegal magazine capacity for firearms in restricted states), we won't take the engagement regardless of revenue.

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