The Alberta Securities Commission needed to run regulated government ad campaigns across two brands simultaneously. One policy misstep would have shut everything down.

Running government regulated ad campaigns across two brands on a fixed budget with zero room for compliance errors.

Most regulated advertisers treat compliance as a checkpoint at the end of the creative process - the Alberta Securities Commission could not afford that approach. As Alberta's government securities regulator, ASC runs enforcement awareness campaigns under its own brand and consumer investor education campaigns under CheckFirst.ca simultaneously, two distinct brands with two distinct audiences and two distinct compliance frameworks, all operating under the same fixed annual budget with platform policies that treat financial services advertising with significant scrutiny. A single disapproval or policy flag on either account could have disrupted campaigns tied to time-sensitive enforcement actions or investor fraud alerts, which meant every creative decision carried real operational consequences beyond just performance metrics.

The fixed budget created a compounding constraint that required active management throughout the year rather than a set-and-forget campaign structure. Enforcement actions, fraud alerts, and investor education pieces were published on an unpredictable schedule, each requiring new campaigns built and cleared for compliance quickly while the annual budget was reallocated dynamically across both brands and both platforms. Outperforming prior-year benchmarks while spending less per campaign required treating budget allocation as an ongoing decision rather than an upfront plan.

Compliance built into the production process, not bolted on at the end.

Every new enforcement action or investor education piece became a campaign brief that had to clear two compliance layers before a single dollar was spent. Creative was audited against both ASC's government communications standards and Google and StackAdapt's financial services advertising policies simultaneously, requiring an understanding of where the two frameworks overlapped and where they diverged. Zero ad disapprovals across the entire engagement was not a passive outcome - it was the result of building compliance review into production rather than treating it as a final gate that campaigns had to pass through after the work was already done.

StackAdapt programmatic ran alongside Google Ads to extend reach beyond search intent into contextual and behavioral targeting across relevant publisher inventory. Budget moved actively between platforms and brands throughout the year based on conversion performance and content availability, prioritizing spend toward whichever brand had time-sensitive material in market and pulling back where inventory had been exhausted. The audiences built through both platforms became segmented, retargetable pools that the commission continues to use for event targeting beyond the original campaign period.

248,155 conversions at $0.32 each. Better results than the prior year at lower cost.

With compliance built into the production process and budget managed actively rather than allocated and left alone, both brands outperformed prior-year benchmarks while spending less per campaign. 248,155 conversions across Google Ads and StackAdapt at $0.32 per conversion, 8.7 million impressions, and a 2.61% CTR represented a meaningful improvement over historical performance for the commission. The retargetable audience pools built through the engagement gave the ASC and CheckFirst.ca a durable asset beyond the campaign period, enabling event-specific targeting that did not require rebuilding audiences from scratch for future activations.

Common questions about this engagement.