case study
Pet Support on YouTube: 8.7M Views and 2.2M Actions Boost Brand Impact
In this brand awareness case study, we showcase how Llama Lead Gen partnered with Pets and People, an initiative funded by The Ad Council, the Humane Society, and Maddie’s Fund, on a Youtube video ad campaign called “Supporting Pets in Your Community” to encourage viewers to help keep pet owners and pets in their community together by donating necessary supplies or fostering animals that need shelter.
The brand awareness and engagement campaign targeted users who are Pet Lovers and "Not Yet" Pet Lovers. The campaign had a dual objective to increase brand awareness with video views while driving engagement and traffic to the landing page. The campaign wrapped with a 25% engagement rate with 2.2M engagements and 8.7M video views. 35% of users who clicked through the video ads spent more than 10 seconds on the website learning more about how to better support local pets.
Introduction
The Humane Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal-related cruelties on a national level. The Humane Society targets issues ranging from banning trophy hunting of animals to ending pet homelessness. Pets and People Together is an initiative that is a collaboration between The Humane Society, the Ad Council, and Maddie’s Fund, a national family foundation established to revolutionize the status and well-being of companion animals.
From a cat helping a senior feel less lonely to a dog providing emotional support for a veteran, pets and people form powerful bonds. While having a pet offers a mutual benefit to the pet and the owner, caring for an animal does come with additional costs whether that’s to the pet owner or a local animal shelter. When a pet owner struggles, so do their pets.
Partnering with Llama Lead Gen, Pets and People Together launched the “Supporting Pets in Your Community” campaign to rally community support by raising donations to cover the cost of veterinary expenses and pet supplies for pet owners in need and by increasing the rate of pet fostering in local communities to lessen the burdens on local animal shelters.
The campaign targeted primarily adult Pet Lovers on YouTube but also tested into targeting users who are "Not Yet" Pet Lovers who care about community issues and have searched for pet adoption-related topics. The campaign had a variety of video assets at various lengths. The campaign leveraged a two-pronged approach with both skippable and non-skippable videos to maximize video views as well as drive further engagement to encourage exploration of the issue and solution. The Pets and People Together landing page featured the varying ways that one can contribute to helping a local pet in need through donating, volunteering, and fostering.
Objectives and Goals
The primary objective of this campaign was to enhance community support for pets and their owners by increasing awareness and driving actionable engagement. Specifically, we aimed to:
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Raise donations for veterinary expenses and pet supplies for owners in need.
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Boost the rate of pet fostering to alleviate the burden on local shelters.
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Elevate the Pets and People initiative's visibility as a key player in community-based animal welfare.
The Challenge
The Humane Society came to Llama Lead Gen to help refine its media strategy around a complex campaign with dual objectives. They needed to ensure that their messaging received sufficient video views to increase awareness for Pets and People Together while also driving engagement from viewers to understand their possible community impact.
The main challenge of this campaign was to ensure that the budget was maximized against both objectives. Finding the right balance between skippable and unskippable video tactics as well as the right audience mix to achieve the goals efficiently.
The Ad Council looked to partner with Llama Lead Gen to solidify their approach to reach the right audience and drive both video views and engagements. With the past success of campaigns between Ad Council and Llama Lead Gen, we were able to leverage this existing trust and relationship to collaborate on a marketing plan.
Brand Awareness Marketing Strategy
The Ad Council and Llama Lead Gen chose YouTube as the main platform for this campaign to drive mass reach for our video messaging. Across YouTube, we targeted A25-65 who were Pet Lovers and tested into a secondary audience of "Not Yet" Pet Lovers who had shown interest in adoption-related topics.
The campaign leveraged a dual objective approach with a Skippable campaign that focused on driving traffic to the landing page and an Unskippable campaign to drive completed video views. For the Unskippable portion of the campaign, we targeted both Pet Lovers and "Not Yet" Pet Lovers with our video messaging. For the Skippable portion of the campaign, we targeted only Pet Lovers as we wanted to reach those who were most likely to be deeply engaged with our messaging and would click through to the landing page.
Given the focus on the main goal of the campaign to ultimately drive more actions from members within communities to help out local pets and pet owners, a heavier percentage of the budget was spent against the traffic-driving objective to get users to browse different roles they can take as part of the solution on the Pets and People Together website.
We monitored the campaign performances and made weekly budget optimizations, moving budgets based on audience performance. A mix of videos was leveraged to allow platform optimization flexibility. The videos emphasized different aspects of how the viewer can contribute to the cause by showing the impact of fostering pets to provide them with temporary shelters as well as the impact of donating pet supplies to help alleviate financial pressures from a pet owner in need. Llama Lead Gen worked together with the Ad Council to ensure that the ad copy aligned with the nuance of each video.
Solution & Implementation
After we gained a full understanding of the strategy and goals of this campaign, we started by collaborating with the Ad Council to align on finalizing ad copy for the ads as well as ensuring that the target audiences that we have selected resonate. The Llama Lead Gen team took full ownership of the media planning, pixel tracking, and execution of the campaign set up within the YouTube platform.
The campaign was launched after careful QA to ensure that our campaigns, audiences, and ads were set up properly. Our team monitored the performance daily and adjusted the budget accordingly based on what ads and audiences were performing well. Shifting dollars into more efficient audiences and ads.
Overall, the campaign paced well throughout the flight. The Unskippable saw higher cost-pers as anticipated as it was a forced tactic versus the Skippable portion of the campaign with our creative assets being well-received.
Performance & Data
The campaign had multiple objectives of driving both awareness in terms of video views as well as engagements/traffic to the website. Given this, the campaign leveraged both Skippable and Unskippable videos to achieve this. Throughout the campaign, we were able to drive a total of 21M impressions, 8.7M video views, and 2.2M engagements. From a lower funnel perspective, we drove 133K clicks and 47K engaged website sessions.
By leveraging both Skippable and Unskippable videos, we were able to achieve the desired balance between video views and traffic to the site. 75% of overall video views had come from the Unskippable campaign while the Skippable campaign helped drive mass reach with its more efficient cost-pers, making up 67% of overall impressions. Nearly 99% of all engagements as well as click-throughs to the site were attributed to the Skippable/traffic-focused portion of the campaign.
Tracking the flow of users through a multi-step process, we saw that out of the 133K users who clicked through to the ads, over a third (35%) of those users stayed engaged with the Pets and People landing page for more than 10 seconds. This is a strong indication that we were able to seek out qualified users and that the landing page content was useful and engaging.
20,999,621
Impressions
8,738,120
Video Views
2,213,008
Engagement (25% engagement rate from video view)
132,797
Clicks
47,060
Engaged Sessions (35%)
Deliverables are always on time & recommendations on how to improve our campaigns are expected. It’s truly a breath of fresh air to have partners who are always on top of everything!
Rasheia Haris
Digital Media Director @ Ad Council
Moving Forward
There is nothing like the unique bond pets and their people share. But when pet owners face unexpected challenges in life, so do their pets. Pets and People Together advocated that there is no gesture too small or too big to help keep pets and their people together. The Supporting Pets in Your Community campaign PSAs feature touching stories that demonstrate how even small acts of generosity can help pets and families in a community remain together, where they belong.
By leveraging YouTube, a video platform with a significant reach, we were able to successfully execute a dual objective campaign by getting 8.7M video views against our messaging and 133K clicks to the website. Additionally, the campaign received over 21M impressions, 2.2M engagements, and the clicks resulted in 47K engaged sessions on the landing page.
There were many learnings throughout the campaign. With the usage of both the Skippable and Unskippable videos, we were able to achieve a balance in driving metrics that were most important to the Pets and People Together team. The strength of each tactic helped us maintain efficiency across the campaign. Interestingly, the “Not Yet” Pet Lovers performed similarly to the Pet Lovers which indicated that this is a viable audience group to pursue in future activations.
From a creative perspective, given the above insight, Llama Lead Gen recommended creating assets that spoke more directly to the “Not Yet” Pet Lovers group as they are in different circumstances versus the Pet Lovers group and likely will be able to better contribute and support in different areas.
The Ad Council's contentment with the campaign's performance stands as a testament to its remarkable success and the effectiveness of our strategic approach. The results not only underscore our collective impact but also highlight the campaign's impressive reach and profound engagement within the target demographic.
Let’s Connect
If you're focused on amplifying your brand's presence and engaging more meaningfully with your audience, Llama Lead Gen is your go-to partner. We excel in designing targeted campaigns centered around brand awareness and engagement, ensuring your marketing objectives are not just achieved but exceeded.
