Brief:

• For the first half of 2017, Nutrish teamed with Tremor Video DSP to retarget ads to the mobile devices of second-screen viewers, viewers of competitors' ads and cord-cutters, according to a case study made available to Mobile Marketer. Tremor Video DSP used Alphonso TV Data Cloud insights gleaned from smart TVs, set-top boxes and connected devices in 34 million households. Nielsen Catalina data reveals the pet food brand’s media strategies resulted in a 10% sales lift for $1.1 million in incremental sales, with 90% of incremental sales coming from past customers.
• As of 2018, Nutrish’s products are now available at all U.S. PetSmart stores and at PetSmart.com, and the brand has evolved its marketing campaign, retargeting ads to viewers who see ads for the retail chain. So far this year, there has been a 29% lift in foot traffic to PetSmart for viewers of Nutrish video ads in the 30-day look ahead window, according to Alphonso Insights.
• Nutrish is also targeting “multitasking, mobile, busy women” using Alphonso TV data and is working to own “the couch screen” during live events, according to a Tremor Video DSP representative. The company targeted viewers of the 2018 Winter Olympics with a long-form, 60-second ad and saw more than 50% completion rates to live viewers.

Insight:

Nutrish is a fast-growing player in the crowded pet food market, which is projected to reach nearly $100 billion by 2022, according to Grand View Research. Despite the company’s growth, Nutrish had a smaller advertising budget than some of its larger competitors, but still wanted to drive awareness. It did so with the Tremor Video DSP campaign, retargeting ads to the mobile devices of viewers that might fall through the cracks of traditional TV campaigns: distracted, second-screen viewers, viewers who saw a competitor’s TV ad, or — like nearly half of millennials and Gen Xers — viewers that don’t watch traditional TV.

With an IAB study finding that 90% of smartphone users recall mobile ads, marketers like Nutrish are taking a closer look at these techniques. "Keeping top of mind amongst competitive set is hugely important," Abbey Thomas, CMO of Tremor Video DSP, told Mobile Marketer. "Even if a brand can't spend what its competitors are spending on TV, we can help them own the personal device screen, own the TV retargeting screen and jump out and grab people's attention."

There has been some pushback against retargeting. Earlier this year, a Nanigans survey found that 83% of marketers think retargeted ads have been given credit for sales that would have happened without the ads, with 75% of retail marketers unable to measure whether sales attributed to retargeting would have happened organically. Likewise, large majorities of consumers think they see too many retargeted ads from the same retailers. 

In contrast to these concerns, Tremor Video DSP points to the $1.1 million sales lift found by Nielsen Catalina to prove the efficacy of retargeting. Nutrish is poised to improve on these gains with its PetSmart partnership, especially after seeing the increase in foot traffic by viewers of its ad. In addition to being available through PetSmart, Nutrish's role in the pet food category could see a boost from the acquisition of its parent company, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, by food giant J.M. Smucker in April.