There are over 70 million pet dogs and hundreds of breeds of all shapes, sizes and ages in the U.S. That’s A LOT of dogs. IAMS produces over 40 different food formulas to ensure every unique dog receives the proper nutrition and the right ingredients based on dog type, lifestage and health concern. It can be confusing to pet owners to figure out which formula is right one for their dog. That’s why it’s easy for people to fall into the diet fad trap for their pets and the “if it’s good for me, it must good for my pet too” belief. Unfortunately, pets themselves aren’t the ones who get to decide what they eat.

This is a situation where programmatic will allow us to present dog owners with the proper solution and cut through the confusion of pet nutrition.

We developed dynamic and personalized digital ad units that automatically adapted to show individual dog owners the right nutritious IAMS solution for their unique pet. Using our audience data, the units included a picture of their relevant dog breed as well as the type of IAMS food that would be most nutritious.

The ads were specific; if we identified an individual pet owner in our audience as having a golden retriever with concerns about energy level, they received an ad with a picture of a golden, testimonial copy from a fellow dog owner that stated, "I noticed an increased activity level" and the most relevant IAMS product.

Our addressable messages were designed with heightened relevancy that we scaled. We tapped broad reaching sites like msn.com and Time Inc. to generate reach for our personalized messages and also connected via relevant pet related sites, like petfinder.com and allpaws.com.

The programmatic addressable strategy worked to make what IAMS stands for – nutrition based in science – relevant again. We successfully took a customized messaging solution and made it scalable. In doing so, we changed beliefs and increased IAMS intent to purchase.

We reached over 25 million individual dog owners with over 80 million impressions. This resulted in a 7% lift for the key perception of “I feel good about feeding my dog IAMS because it provides the optimal nutrition he/she needs throughout every life stage“, proving we increased belief of proper canine nutrition for pet dogs, and a 9% lift in purchase intent among those exposed to our dynamic units.