A Q&A with Brenton Maddox SVP, Client Success
By Calvin Scharffs
In early January, Orange 142 announced the formation of a dedicated high-compliance practice for regulated industries. The initiative is designed to help brands and agencies navigate the legal, platform, and industry requirements governing how campaigns are planned and executed in these categories.
Calvin Schraffs, VP of Marketing at Orange 142, sat down with Brenton Maddox, SVP of Client Success, to discuss how the practice works, what makes regulated advertising different, and how Orange 142 approaches compliance in complex environments.
CS: Orange 142 has announced a dedicated high-compliance practice for regulated industries. Can you tell me about it?
BM: It’s a focused effort to help brands and agencies run advertising in regulated categories safely and effectively. We bring together our media planning, buying, and optimization capabilities with a structured approach to compliance. The goal is to give marketers confidence that their campaigns meet legal, platform, and industry requirements.
We manage that complexity for our clients. We plan campaigns within those constraints and execute them to protect the brand while delivering performance.
CS: What’s the difference between regulated advertising and sensitive advertising?
BM: Regulated advertising is governed by formal rules that control who you can target, what you can say, and where you’re allowed to run. Those rules come from three sources: the industry's structure, the policies of advertising platforms, and state or federal law.
A campaign becomes regulated when those rules materially affect how the media is planned and executed. That could mean age restrictions, geographic restrictions, required disclosures, or limitations on claims or creative. If those rules aren’t followed, campaigns can be rejected, accounts can be restricted, or the advertiser can face legal exposure.
Sensitive campaigns are different. The topic may be controversial or require brand safety considerations, but there aren’t formal legal or platform rules dictating how it must be run. Regulated campaigns require structured controls and compliance steps throughout planning, targeting, and activation.
CS: Why is Orange 142 suited to handle advertising for regulated industries?
BM: We combine marketing expertise with direct industry experience. We’ve brought in people who have worked in regulated sectors such as energy, an area of expertise for us. They understand how those industries operate, how regulations work in practice, and what marketers are permitted to do across different markets.
That knowledge is paired with our media and ad tech capabilities, so campaigns are planned and executed with both the marketing objectives and the regulatory requirements in mind.
CS: What are the layers of regulation advertisers need to account for?
BM: There are three layers. The first is the industry's structure. In energy, for example, some markets are deregulated, allowing consumers to choose their provider. In other areas, consumers choose from a regulated provider network. That changes how and where you can market those services.
The second layer is platform rules. Even if something is legal in a given geography, platforms like Google or Meta have their own policies. For example, you can’t run tobacco advertising on Meta regardless of legality, because the platform itself does not allow it.
The third layer is government regulation, which varies by state and locality. In Maryland, you cannot advertise flavored nicotine products. In California, you can only talk about flavored versus non-flavored in a certain way. In Denver, the rules are more permissive. The same product must be marketed differently in different markets.
All three layers apply simultaneously, and campaigns must be planned around all of them.
CS: You say you have a dedicated practice for compliance. Can you tell me how it operates?
BM: Compliance is enforced through a series of checks and settings at the campaign level, based on industry, platform, and geographic rules. When we set up a campaign, we define who can be targeted, which locations are eligible, and the restrictions that apply. Our teams follow those guidelines based on their industry experience.
We don’t enforce those controls alone. We rely on a chain of partners across the ecosystem. We set the targeting and compliance parameters in our DSPs, and our DSP partners, network partners, and brand compliance partners carry those controls through in their systems. It’s a funnel of checks, with each party responsible for applying and honoring those restrictions.
No one can fully guarantee compliance end-to-end. Our role is to conduct due diligence, establish appropriate controls, and work with partners who are expected to enforce those requirements throughout the campaign.
CS: What is the biggest gap between something being legal to advertise and being allowed on major platforms, and how do you plan around that?
BM: The biggest gap is that platform policies don’t always match what’s legally allowed. A product or service might be fully legal in a state, but a platform like Meta or Google may still prohibit that category or limit its advertising. Take tobacco. Even where it is legal, Meta does not permit tobacco advertising, so legality does not guarantee access to that channel.
To plan around that, we treat platform rules as a separate layer from legal compliance. We review each platform's capabilities, select channels permitted for that category, and build campaigns within those constraints. If a platform doesn't support the category, we don’t run there.
CS: If a marketer in a regulated category wants to get started with this high-compliance practice, what should they do?
BM: The first step is to reach out to the Orange 142 team. We’ll start with a conversation about the category they’re in, the markets they want to operate in, and the goals they’re pursuing.
From there, we evaluate the applicable industry, platform, and regulatory requirements, map where and how they can advertise, and build a plan that meets those constraints. Once everything is aligned, we set up the campaign with the right controls in place and manage it from launch through optimization so they can move forward with confidence.
