Up to 20% of adopted pets are returned to shelter in the first three months after adoption. People choose animals that don’t fit their lifestyle, personality, without consulting shelter personnel. Consequently, the challenge is not just to improve pet adoption rates, but to ensure responsible adoptions that last a lifetime. That is, having people adopt the appropriate pets for them.

La Société Protectrice des Animaux (SPA) is the leading animal protection association in France. It runs a nationwide network of animal shelters, rescues & protects animals, improves their life & wellbeing, fights illegal traffic, and raises awareness among public opinion.

As an advocate of responsible adoptions, SPA wanted to match the right potential owners with the right pets. Lacking resources for a large media campaign, the purpose was to find the most cost-effective means to generate responsible adoptions.

The biggest animal shelter network in France, SPA, needed to match the right pets with the right potential owners. Introducing THERE’S A PET FOR THAT: the campaign that turned the app store into a super-targeted pet catalogue. How? By hijacking media space reserved for apps, in the app store, and using it to display real shelter pets – whose personality matched the app users.

For example, athletic people need an athletic dog, so we displayed matching dogs in the search results for Nike Run Club, Strava and other athletic apps. We targeted many categories of apps / personalities, like sport, relaxation, family or social.

The ads directed users to the SPA app for responsible adoption. The potential owners filled in a questionnaire to verify their suitability for adoption; saw the cats or dogs matching them (based on answers to the questionnaire) and were directed to the closest SPA shelter.

• Definition of the key dimensions guiding the responsible pet adoption and ownership;

• Linking the specifics of responsible pet adoption with categories of apps and search data on the Appstore, based on the audiences prone to adopt an animal (e.g. fitness, relaxation, socialization, kids entertainment);

• Establishing the most relevant list of search keywords (both apps/brands and generic) to reach the most promising potential pet owners;

• Showing adapted creative assets for each target group of our media campaigns: displaying the appropriate dogs / cats (real animals available for adoption) for each category;

• Gathering 1st party data thanks to the app (through our contact form)

• Search campaigns: 14 days, from 6th February to 19th February

• Targeted apps/brands: Nike Training Club, FitBit, FizzUp, Samsung Health, Sweat, Freeletics, My Fitness Pal, Calm, Headspace, BrainFM, Gotta Yoga, Elevate, Sanvello, Pacifica, Badoo, Happn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, Angry Birds, Youtube Kids, Minecraft, Mario Kart, Pokemon Go, Spongebob, Clash Royale, Subway Surfers and others.

• Appstore, social, PR

• Only France was targeted

461 dogs and 856 cats were adopted, bringing the total to 1317 responsible adoptions.

The App Store ads had a tap-through rate (TTR) of 33,65% (higher than average TTR of 28,38%, acc. to Splitmetrics).

The social campaign had 537.000 impressions, with 23.800 interactions.

The SPA adoption app had 3 017 installs, at a cost per install around 1.23€.

The SPA website campaign page had 15.000 visitors.

The campaign hijacked users of Nike Training Club, FitBit, FizzUp, Samsung Health, Sweat, Freeletics, My Fitness Pal, Calm, Headspace, BrainFM, Gotta Yoga, Elevate, Sanvello, Pacifica, Badoo, Happn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, Angry Birds, Youtube Kids, Minecraft, Mario Kart, Pokemon Go, Spongebob, Clash Royale, Subway Surfers and others.