The dog treat market in Croatia was in lockdown even before lockdown became a word. Only a handful of brands used paid media in 2019, with minimal investment.

But in 2020, brands re-entered the market. The pressure on Pedigree, the market leader, intensified.

Our challenge was to find a way to put its hero range - Pedigree Dentastix - back out in front.

We realised that pet parents were most engaged with their dogs when they take them for a walk.

WE WOULD DELIVER PERSONALISED ADVERTS… TO DOGS

Our idea was to deliver personalised advertising using DOOH technology to target dogs. We would build a computer algorithm to analyse the camera videostream. Once it identified a dog, it would instruct the DOOH screen to show a Pedigree Dentastix ad.

Dynamic creative optimisation would allow us to match products to that specific dog. This meant small dogs would see an advert showing a similar sized dog, for example, with big dogs seeing a large animal on screen.

By working with Go2Digital – the leading Croatian DOOH provider – and Google’s TensorFlow we could build a machine-learning tool to detect dogs.

Our activity would run over three key phases: test the technology, test the cost efficiency and finally a full-scale national roll out to test sales impact.

We’d show that the best driver of Dentastix sales were dogs themselves.

THE WORLD’S FIRST PROGRAMMATIC DOOH CAMPAIGN BASED ON DOG DETECTION

We built a machine-learning algorithm that could identify dogs in live video, becoming the first brand in the world to run a programmatic campaign based on dog detection.

Our campaign rolled out in three stages:

First, we ran a network-wide test, selecting the best sites and times by scanning for dogs 24-hours a day.

Next, we ran our first flight across 14 screens, proving that targeting dogs would result in a lowest-cost engaged attention of any channel.

Finally, we ran our national campaign which included TV, digital and OOH. We went on to isolate one region for the roll-out of our Dogvertising algorithm. We also identified stores that could be surrounded by Dogvertising screens to investigate the impact of proximity.

In phases two and three, we added creative optimisation so every dog would see a dog of a similar size.

29% INCREMENTAL SALES

The goal of our first flight was to prove that reaching pet parents result in a lowest-cost attention when compared with alternative channels – Dogvertising delivered a 34.4% lower cost for actively viewed ads by pet parents.

It also delivered a 13.5 second average viewing time by pet parents – four times higher than similar Mars campaigns. Eye-tracking studies showed a CPM for an actively viewed DOOH ad by a pet parent of $9.17 via DOOH, vs $14.08 for TV.

Our second flight was designed to prove how reaching pet parents in perfect context delivered additional sales. Our robust regional testing showed that when all other factors were equal, Dogvertising delivered a 29% incremental sales uplift. And when we ran the activity near stores, we delivered a 106% year-on-year sales uplift.

We’re now exploring the international rollout options across the Mars network.