Advertising on Chewy's Retail Media Network: The One-Stop Guide
Chewy has built its reputation on unparalleled customer service—not just selling pet products, but supporting pet parents through every stage of their journey. Now, it’s bringing that same commitment to advertisers with Chewy Ads, offering brands a powerful way to connect with a highly engaged pet-loving audience.
The pet industry is booming, fueled by a surge in pet adoptions during the pandemic. Now valued at $320 billion, the market continues to see rapid year-over-year growth. According to the a report by the American Pet Products Association, 66% of U.S. households—more than 86 million—owned a pet between 2024 and 2024. And a whopping 20 million of those pet parents are Chewy customers.
With highly loyal, high-intent shoppers, Chewy Ads offers brands an unmatched opportunity to reach pet parents who are already engaged and ready to buy.
What is Chewy’s Retail Media Network?
Chewy’s retail media network, called Chewy Ads, lets pet brands connect directly with engaged pet parents shopping on Chewy. Ads appear in key placements across the platform, ensuring visibility where it matters most—right as customers search for and discover related products. Brands manage campaigns through the retailer’s own self-service portal with real-time performance insights and optimization tools.
Chewy Ads takes a unique approach to bidding, ad placements, and campaign targeting – it differs significantly from platforms like Amazon. While Amazon strategies often focus on topline revenue growth with investments in upper-funnel media and audience targeting, success on Chewy revolves around brand awareness, non-branded keyword strategies, and boosting promotions or new product launches. Chewy’s algorithm automatically determines which search queries or placements trigger the ad based on product attributes, relevance, and user intent. Unlike Amazon, where advertisers can bid on exact match, phrase match, and broad match keywords, Chewy automates keyword matching based on product relevance.
One standout feature is Chewy’s Lifetime Value (LTV) ROAS metric. It offers insights into both current and forecasted sales attributed to Chewy’s powerful Autoship program, which accounted for $2.3 billion in revenue – roughly 80% of the company’s net sales in Q3 of 2024.
Autoship gives brands access to highly engaged, returning customers who rely on Chewy for their pet care needs. 45% of ad-attributed purchases convert into recurring Autoship orders, creating long-term customer value. Because of the platform’s high-intent shoppers, brands typically see an average lifetime value return of $7 for every $1 spent on Chewy Ads. By leveraging exclusive first-party data, Chewy Ads delivers personalized ad placements that drive engagement, optimize conversions, and maximize results.
Why Advertise on Chewy?
Pet owners consistently choose Chewy (25%) over Amazon (22%) and Walmart (12%), largely due to its fast shipping, competitive pricing, and specialized product selection according to the Chewy 2023 Retailer Perception Study. Unlike broader marketplaces, Chewy offers a streamlined shopping experience, reducing duplicate listings and making it easier for pet parents to find exactly what they need.
Chewy is driving broader and deeper customer engagement, as reflected by their net sales per active customer of $565, which reached a new record for the company in 2024.
While Chewy Ads is a newer player in the retail media space, it presents a first-mover advantage for pet brands, allowing them to establish a strong presence in a market with less competition than Amazon or Walmart’s ad networks. 1 in 3 clicks on Chewy Ads leads to a purchase for increased brand discovery and customer acquisition.
Chewy does the heavy lifting in driving traffic—leveraging TV ads, direct mail, and other digital marketing channels to bring qualified shoppers straight to their marketplace.
Ad Types Available for Chewy Advertisers
Chewy Ads unlocks multiple high-impact advertising opportunities across channels to boost visibility in key shopping moments with relevant and convenient product offerings. Channel placements include sponsored products, sponsored brands, and sponsored video on browse and search pages, product detail pages, and deal pages across desktop, mobile, and the Chewy app, as well as targeted placements on offsite search and social platforms.
Product listing ads
These ads appear within search results and on product detail pages (PDPs) across desktop, mobile, and in-app. They boost product visibility by placing SKUs at the top of product listing pages, increasing conversions in competitive categories. Brands can also highlight promotions and dominate share of voice to stay ahead of competitors.
Sponsored brands ads
Sponsored Brand Ads offer high-visibility placements at the top of relevant search results pages on desktop and mobile. These ads feature multiple interactive elements, directing shoppers to PDPs or a brand store to increase awareness and market share. They also allow brands to showcase multiple SKUs in a single ad unit, helping customers discover a variety of products.
Banner ads
Banner Ads are placed on high-traffic areas like the homepage, navigation flyout, and category pages. They are managed service ads with audience-level targeting, ensuring brands reach the right customers at the right time. Available on desktop, mobile, and in-app, these ads help maximize brand visibility and engagement.
Social & Google shopping
These ads use Chewy’s first-party data to reach new, high-intent audiences outside the platform. They are designed to drive incremental sales by targeting pet parents actively searching for relevant products. Brands can also boost promotions during key shopping periods, increasing visibility and conversions.
Offsite display in self-service
Offsite Display Ads help brands expand their reach beyond Chewy, connecting with pet owners shopping for similar products elsewhere. These self-service ads drive new customer acquisition and market share growth. They ensure brands engage with high-intent shoppers before they even land on Chewy.
Partner Marketing packages
These packages include high-visibility placements such as the homepage, category and subcategory banners, and Today’s Deals SKUs. They help brands capture shopper attention at key touchpoints and drive engagement. This format is ideal for boosting brand awareness, product discovery, and conversions.
Actionable Advice to Improve Your Chewy Ads
Here are some expert insights the team gathered to boost performance:
Improve your product visibility
A comprehensive strategy is essential to effectively improve visibility and sales within Chewy Retail Media Advertising. First, optimize your product listing pages for higher organic rankings. While this could be an entire post on its own, start by making sure your title is detailed, easy to understand, and keyword-rich. Then, add plenty of supporting photos and text in your product description.
Once your page is ready to go, it’s time to win and maintain category share by bidding highly on branded terms. These terms are less competitive but highly searched, granting an opportunity for prominent placement on the search results page. For example, a brand that sells pet food toppers could benefit from bidding on a premium pet food’s brand name.
Simultaneously, brands should expand their reach to new-to-brand (NTB) customers through targeted investments in lower-funnel placements, increasing awareness and driving conversions. In this case, the pet food topper brand might want to bid on “Suggested Products” during checkout.
Finally, fostering long-term customer value and encouraging repeat purchases can be accomplished by prioritizing the promotion of SKUs that align with Chewy’s Autoship subscription program, ensuring consistent sales and customer loyalty.
Optimize your bidding strategy
When advertising on Chewy Ads, it’s important to spread your budget across different ad formats—such as Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and the upcoming Sponsored Video option. Allocating more of your budget to mid-funnel media (meaning, ads targeting consumers who are aware of your brand but haven’t yet purchased) can drive better efficiency and results.
Chewy Ads enables you to target ads specifically by product categories and subcategories. Simply select the products you want to advertise, and the platform automatically aligns these ads with the right category placements. Focus on promoting your most profitable products within categories you aim to dominate, and utilize banner ads to increase visibility for new product launches. Additionally, using keyword bid modifiers can help you dynamically adjust bids to maximize your return on investment.
Lastly, because Chewy Ads doesn’t currently support negative keywords (terms you specifically exclude from targeting), it’s crucial to safeguard your brand’s market share by proactively running competitive campaigns using branded keywords.
Build better performance reports
Chewy Ads provides customizable reporting directly within the platform, allowing you to easily review the performance of your advertising campaigns. You can further improve your tracking and analysis by using campaign tagging, which helps you monitor how effectively each campaign performs. This insight enables you to optimize your advertising strategies and make smarter budget decisions.
Additionally, measurement platforms like Bliss Point by Tinuiti offer advanced analytics, giving you a comprehensive view across multiple channels. This tool helps you measure the true impact of your advertising investments by tracking and quantifying consumer purchases made both online and in-store across major retailers.
Conclusion
Chewy Ads provides a unique advertising opportunity for brands with proprietary insights like LTV ROAS metric, exclusive first-party data and personalized placements to maximize engagement and conversions.
Be on the lookout for lots of exciting changes and upcoming additional ad solutions as the platform ramps up beyond its beginner stages. Chewy has already announced Sponsored Video and the expansion of Offsite Search & Social in 2025.
When exploring any new advertising opportunity, the best results are typically realized when partnering with a performance marketing agency that understands the unique and ever-shifting Commerce landscape. Our team boasts years of hands-on experience advertising pet products in new and established marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart, and Target.
Ready to learn more about how we can help your brand? Reach out to us today!
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