The campaign objectives were to build awareness and increase sales of VetriScience®'s Composure behavior supplement for cats and dogs, specifically related to the use of a behavior support supplement to help ease anxiety caused by storms.
Pet anxiety is a common issue, but it is most often self-diagnosed, as pet parents don't think to or don't want to talk to their veterinarian about it. In addition, the anxiety can sometimes be an on-going issue, or triggered by a specific event, such as thunderstorms and fireworks.
It was this specific problem that so many pet owners have that we wanted to focus on, capturing them as close as possible to the moment of need in order to increase their awareness of our supplement-based solution.
Storms are a common stressor for pets and Composure is a safe, clinically proven supplement to help pets remain calm through these events.
Rinck leveraged weather-trigger search and programmatic display campaigns leading up to and during inclement weather events in order to position VetriScience® Composure™ as the solution to weather-related pet anxiety.
Ads were triggered to run during events such as thunder storms, hail storms, hurricanes, tornados, or periods of high winds.Search ads targeted consumers who were searching terms related to pet stress caused by storms or loud noises, increasing cost per click bids corresponding to weather events.
Programmatic campaigns targeting pet owners were set to ramp up impression delivery in geo-locations experiencing active weather events.
Weather targeting can trigger campaigns to run when specific weather-related events occur. A weather-related event may be rain, sleet, fog or snow. Rinck's programmatic campaign had ads triggered by more severe weather-related events like hail, high winds, hurricane warning, severe thunderstorm warning and tornado warning. Campaigns are launched in an area matching the weather conditions set up.
Search ads utilized a layered weather-triggered approach:
Targeting users searching terms related to pet stress and quantifiers, such as storms or loud noises
Increasing cost per click bids for consumers who are about to (up to a day before), currently are, or have recently experienced (up to a day after) a targeted weather event. Bids would then go back down to previous levels.
The strategy drove high levels of engagement with the VetriScience Composure ads, with the click through rate for weather-triggered search ads being 208% higher than an equivalent campaign that was not utilizing weather parameters.
One ad groups clicks increased 10,385% vs the prior year once the weather-based parameters were implemented.
Average cost per click did increase with weather-triggered bid adjustments but still within acceptable ranges.
The programmatic strategy was also successful with weather-triggered targeting accounting for the top three targeting tactics for programmatic in the fourth quarter.
Thirty-seven percent of all fourth quarter programmatic impressions were weather-triggered and generating 35% of all campaign clicks.
The targeting drove the highest number of Where to Buy button clicks – showing intent to buy, more than any other targeting tactic.
