YouTube Ads success story · Pet retailer with about 1,500 stores

How Petco drove 71% more store visits with shoppable YouTube video during Cyber Week.

Name: Overtop Media Digital Marketing
Address: 933 Louise Ave Suite 101-18, Charlotte, NC, 28204, US
Telephone: (704) 237-0707
Price range: $$

Petco needed Cyber Week video to sell online and fill its stores at the same time. One Demand Gen campaign across YouTube Shorts, YouTube, Discover and Gmail, with products shown under every video, did both.

Business: Petco
Market: United States
Goal: Online sales and store visits during Cyber Week

Jack Russell puppy playing with new plush toys in a sunlit room

The results.

The return on ad spend gain is compared with Petco’s Demand Gen tests the previous year. Google did not publish baselines for the other results.

626%higher omnichannel return on ad spend
71%more physical store visits
86%lower omnichannel cost per acquisition
6%lift in purchase intent

Cyber Week, last holiday season, as published by Google in August 2026. Google did not state the measurement method.

The challenge.

Petco sells through about 1,500 stores, an app and an online store. During Cyber Week it needed advertising that drove online orders right away without pulling people away from its stores, in the most crowded and expensive week of the year for retail ads.

Running separate campaigns for online and in-store sales would have split the budget and the learning, and made it hard to see which ads were really paying off.

Google illustration of a YouTube Shorts ad on a phone with a product card and a red call-to-action button

What they did.

Demand Gen · YouTube Shorts · YouTube in-stream · Shoppable product feed · Discover and Gmail

One campaign, every screen: A single Demand Gen campaign ran vertical video in YouTube Shorts, horizontal video on YouTube, and ads in Discover and Gmail.
Products under the video: Petco’s product feed added shoppable product tiles beneath the videos, so a viewer could go straight from a Short to the item.
Online and store as one goal: The campaign was built and judged on online and in-store results together, using Maximize conversions bidding.
Its own customers as the guide: Petco’s first-party data and lookalike segments pointed the campaign at people who resembled its best customers.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

The store counted: Because store visits were part of the goal, the campaign was rewarded for sending people into stores, not only for online clicks. That is where the 71% came from.
Shoppable video shortened the trip: Showing the product and price under the video removed steps between interest and purchase in a week when shoppers move fast.
Vertical and horizontal, not one cut: Shorts and standard YouTube were given video made for each screen, instead of one cut cropped to fit everywhere.
Tested before the big week: The gain is measured against Petco’s own Demand Gen tests the year before, so the lessons from those tests were built in.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our youtube ads management.

Count the store, not just the site: For retailers with a counter or a showroom, we set up store visit and in-store sales measurement where Google supports it, so video is credited for the customers it brings through the door.
Put your products in the video: A clean product feed turns your YouTube ads into a shop window. We keep the feed accurate and put the budget behind the products that earn the most.
Cut for each screen: Vertical for Shorts, horizontal for YouTube, a version for TV when it fits. One shoot, several cuts, tested against each other.
One plan with search and Shopping: Our Google Ads management runs your Search and Shopping campaigns alongside, so the demand your videos create turns into sales.