Driving Omnichannel Sales with Google’s Demand Gen
During Cyber Week, Petco faced a classic retail challenge: how to drive immediate online sales without leaving physical store lanes empty. As competitors consolidated their budgets into the same social channels, bidding up costs and competing over a shrinking pool of attention, Petco needed a way to reach high-intent shoppers. Betting that the least-contested demand was waiting outside the social feed, Petco partnered with Ovative Group to capture it through a single, unified Google Demand Gen investment built to drive both online and in-store outcomes.
626%
increase in omnichannel ROAS
APPROACH
One campaign, two paths to purchase
To capture that untapped demand, Ovative and Petco's solution expanded outside the social media bubble, running Google's highly visual Demand Gen ads to reach shoppers during the key holiday gifting window. This strategic shift enabled Petco to reach high-value pet parents where they already spent their time: browsing YouTube, checking Gmail, or scrolling through their personalized Discover feeds. Instead of splitting budget and creative assets into separate online and offline efforts, Ovative built a unified campaign to drive both outcomes from a single investment.
Building that unified campaign didn't require a new production budget. Ovative repurposed Petco's high-performing Instagram and Facebook videos, reformatted to look native across Google's placements. This meant every dollar not spent on new production could go straight into media investment instead. As Petco's media and creative partner, Ovative also ensured the hook and Petco branding were front-loaded into the first five seconds for an immediate visual and emotional grab.
Closing the gap between inspiration and action meant making the creative itself shoppable. Ovative synced Petco's live product catalog to the ads through Google Merchant Center, so shoppers could purchase a product straight from the video they were watching. Finally, Ovative layered in Petco's first-party customer data to build lookalike audiences, feeding those signals into Google's automated Maximize Conversions bidding. This let Google's AI optimize toward an online checkout or a physical store visit, depending on what each pet parent was most likely to do.
IMPACT
From untapped demand to breakthrough results
By connecting digital performance directly to Petco's most important business outcomes, including physical store visits, customer acquisition costs, and total revenue, Ovative proved that Petco didn't need to choose between digital performance and physical foot traffic to win the season. During Cyber Week, the unified campaign delivered a 626% lift in omnichannel ROAS, Petco's strongest Demand Gen performance to date, alongside a surge in omnichannel visits and a sharp drop in cost per acquisition.
These results carried enough weight to turn what could have been a one-off holiday experiment into a core part of Petco's ongoing media strategy. Demand Gen has remained part of Petco's always-on strategy since, with the same product feed and first-party signals now shaping media investment well beyond the holidays.
626%
increase in omnichannel ROAS
71%
increase in site and store visits
86%
reduction in omnichannel cost per acquisition
6%
lift in purchase intent
