Since the advent of modern advertising in the 1920s, tobacco marketers have worked to convert young audiences into smokers by inundating mainstream media channels, like movies and magazines, with their persuasive messaging \citep{Gifford_2010}. As the health risks associated with smoking became increasingly evident, however, marketing restrictions were enacted on the tobacco industry to reduce their influence on cigarette purchasing behavior. In 1971, "Big Tobacco" was forced to shift their marketing efforts from broadcast to print media when a ban on cigarette advertising for television and radio went into effect in the United States \cite{Mullally_1969}. The Master Settlement Agreement of 1998 later placed further restrictions on cigarette advertising, including practices that specifically targeted individuals under the age of 18 \cite{center2018}. Since then, nearly every tobacco marketing dollar has been funneled to reaching existing and prospective tobacco customers at one of the last places available for influencing purchasing behavior: point-of-sale tobacco (POST) vendors.
In it's most recent Cigarette Report, the Federal Trade Commission found that tobacco marketing expenditure in the United States now amounts to about $1 million per hour \cite{FTC2018}. The rise in combined annual budgets, from $8.30 billion in 2015 to $8.71 billion in 2016, was driven primarily by payments to cigarette retailers and wholesalers to reduce the price of cigarettes that end consumer pay. As evidenced by this vast marketing spend, existing and potential tobacco consumers are vulnerable to the influence of advertising at the point-of-sale. The association between POST exposure and harmful smoking behavior, especially with respect to school-age populations, is well documented \cite{Andrews1991,Evans1995,Arnett1998,Redmond1999,Carter2009}. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, nearly 90% of adult smokers had their first cigarettes before the age of 18 \cite{Health2014}.