40 Under 40: Jon Lowen

Surfside takes clients’ internal data from consumer touchpoints such as loyalty programs, ecommerce sites and point-of-sale, as well as available external data, and uses it to create customer archetypes which are then used to generate targeted marketing campaigns to generate sales and improve customer retention.

“It’s given cannabis operators the leg up to really own their customers and really build out the demand funnels and the engines themselves,” Lowen says. “Our goal is to continue to innovate and lead the way in the ad tech world as it relates to measurement, transparency, customer acquisition, retention, the ability to understand your customers better and get the most value out of every customer that you have.”

Lowen launched Surfside in 2018 and has since worked with thousands of retailers and brands, from single-state operators to large enterprise companies including Cresco Labs and Trulieve. While Surfside has become a leading advertising technology partner for cannabis operators, the company also works across other retail sectors, helping brands and retailers connect through retail media technology, media activation, and measurable customer acquisition.

Lowen says cannabis marketing was somewhat limited when he started working with the industry. He had already spent more than a decade in ad tech, initially helping startup after startup grow, and then moved on to launch a location-based ad company that used hyper-local data to target consumers. That’s where he met his fellow Surfside co-founder and co-CEO, Michael Blanche, and created the company to incorporate location data with a multitude of consumer touchpoints.

“Our whole MO was we are an ad technology through and through,” Lowen says. “That’s all we focus on. We’re not doing SMS. We’re not CRM. We’re not point of sale. We are deep in ad tech.”