Quarterly Commerce Marketing Benchmarks for Pet Care Brands
Overview and KPIs
Pet Care brands operate in a consideration-driven, replenishment-heavy category, where shoppers balance routine purchases with research around health, nutrition, and specialty needs. Shoppers move frequently between search, brand websites, and retail destinations when evaluating products.
MikMak’s quarterly Pet Care commerce marketing benchmarks provide a data-backed view of brand media trends, retailers displayed, and shopper intent, helping brands contextualize performance and refine commerce-enabled activations across owned and paid channels.
This Q1 benchmark analysis is based on MikMak Shopping Index* data from January 1 to March 31, 2026.
The following proprietary MikMak Commerce KPIs were used:
- Purchase Intent Clicks
Measures high-intent shopper traffic by counting the number of times a shopper clicks through to at least one retailer during a single session within MikMak Commerce-enabled brand content. - Purchase Intent Rate
Measures the percentage of shoppers who click through to at least one retailer within MikMak Commerce-enabled brand content, signaling a strong conversion likelihood.
Q1 Pet Care Commerce Marketing Highlights
- Full-funnel "halo effect" drives record conversion: A simultaneous lift across owned and media channels highlights the power of unified commerce-enablement. Brand website Purchase Intent Rates surged to 53.4%, while media intent rose to 12.0%, signaling a highly decisive post-holiday shopper.
- Media mix diversifies beyond search: While search remains the foundation (70.2% of shopper traffic), paid social emerged as a significant secondary driver at 20.1%. Meta’s influence grew to 19.3%, showing that social discovery is increasingly effective for sparking Pet Care replenishment.
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Specialty and eCommerce lead retailer choice: Chewy became the #1 retailer with a 34.2% share of Purchase Intent Clicks, overtaking Walmart and signaling a strong shift toward digital-first, convenience-led Pet Care shopping environments.
United States
A simultaneous lift across both owned and media channels in Q1 2026 highlights a powerful "halo effect," where commerce-enablement across the entire funnel maximizes shopper decisiveness.
Purchase Intent Rates on brand websites surged to 53.4%, up from 21.3% in Q4, meaning more than 1 in 2 visitors who engaged with shoppable options clicked through to a retailer. Media intent also increased to 12.0% (from 9.8%), reinforcing stronger conversion efficiency across discovery channels.
Together, this signals a highly routine-driven category where unified commerce experiences are critical for capturing repeat and replenishment demand.
Search dominates while social accelerates discovery
Paid search remained the primary driver of shopper traffic (70.2%), led by Google (48.0%).
However, paid social expanded to 20.1%, driven by Meta (19.3%), showing that social is increasingly effective for sparking replenishment and influencing purchase timing, not just awareness.
Chewy takes the lead as specialty and eCommerce dominate
Chewy rose to the top position with 34.2% of retailer clicks from MikMak Commerce-enabled brand content, up sharply from 17.3% in Q4. Amazon grew to 20.9%, while Walmart dropped to third at 19.7%.
This shift signals a clear move toward specialty and digital-first retailers, where subscription models, curated assortment, and convenience features like Autoship drive stronger repeat purchasing behavior.
Key Takeaways
- Optimize owned channels for high-intent shoppers: Brand website Purchase Intent Rates more than doubled in Q1. Ensure your site experience is optimized for quick replenishment to capture these decisive shoppers.
- Capture demand via social discovery: The growth of Meta in the Pet Care space indicates that social media is no longer just for awareness. Integrating shoppable paths into social content allows brands to capture "impulse replenishment" and move shoppers from discovery to checkout instantly.
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Invest in a multi-platform search strategy: While Google remains dominant, Bing now captures nearly a quarter of platform clicks (24.8%). Brands should ensure their search strategy covers both major engines to maintain high-intent visibility across different shopper demographics.
Curious to see how MikMak helps brands connect marketing with commerce and unlock first-party shopper data? Schedule a demo today.
*The MikMak Shopping Index was developed to provide a standardized set of metrics, methodology, and benchmarks to help drive brands’ business results and strategy. It is a collection of key eCommerce KPIs from hundreds of brands, over 250 channels, and more than 8,000 retailer integrations worldwide, to understand consumer online shopping behavior.
