Cats outnumber dogs in Europe. Does your creative budget know that? (2026)

Does a cat in an ad change how people decide?

A peer-reviewed study says it does. Jia, Yang and Jiang report across seven studies in the Journal of Marketing that exposure to dogs activates a promotion-focused mindset and exposure to cats a prevention-focused one (The Pet Exposure Effect, Journal of Marketing 86(5), 2022). The American Marketing Association's summary describes dog viewers as more eager and risk seeking and cat viewers as more cautious (AMA press release).

The study tested consumer choices in general, not pet food ads. For cat food the implication is a hypothesis to test: messages about safety, routine and reassurance may fit the mindset a cat on screen creates better than the energy and adventure common in dog advertising.

Test it, don't assume it.

How to audit your pet food creative budget for cats and dogs

The audit compares three shares your team already has. First, the share of revenue from cat products in each market. Second, the share of media spend behind cat products. Third, the share of live creatives (ads, product page images and videos) that show a cat as the main subject.

Divide each marketing share by the revenue share to get an alignment index per market. Say cats bring in 50% of your revenue in Germany but appear in 30% of live creatives: 30 divided by 50 gives a creative index of 0.6, so cat buyers see 40% less creative than their revenue would suggest. Close to 1.0 means the plan follows the money; below 0.8 deserves a decision on whether the gap is deliberate.

The only public cat and dog ad spend comparison found for this article is old and American: MediaRadar reported that from 1 January to 23 May 2020 dog food ad budgets in US media were 58% higher than cat food budgets (PetfoodIndustry, June 2020). It says nothing about Europe in 2026, which is why your own numbers matter more.

Run it market by market. A brand that grew up in the UK will lean toward dogs, because the UK is the one large market where dogs clearly lead, and that weighting can spread quietly to France, Germany and Italy, where cats outnumber dogs by 2 to 7 million each.

What cat-specific pet food ads should show, and the claims they need cleared

Count situations, not only cats. Ten cat ads that all show the same young cat in the same kitchen do not reach the owner with three cats, the owner of a senior cat or the owner of an indoor cat in a small flat.

The data points to four situations with commercial weight: the multi-cat home choosing between textures, the daily wet food routine, the indoor cat whose owner watches weight and hairballs, and the owner who rarely sees a vet and looks for reassurance in the product itself. Each needs its own opening scene and first line.

Cats have been expensive to film because they cannot be directed the way a trained dog can, and that cost keeps cat creative thin. Generated production lowers it, provided a reviewer checks that the animal moves like a real cat; our AI image ad production and AI video ads lock the cat as a character across a set, and the pet brand page shows examples.

Many of the strongest cat messages sit close to health, which is where claims get strict. Urinary and kidney support can only be sold as a particular nutritional purpose when the product is a dietetic feed that meets Regulation (EU) 2020/354.

Anything outside that list stays a support claim, and no pet food may claim to prevent, treat or cure a disease. The full rules for EU and US pet food claims, green claims and AI labels are in Kenneth Dosanjh’s guide to growing value per pet.

A cat and dog audit you can finish this week

Pull three numbers per market: cat revenue share, cat media share and cat creative share. Calculate the two indexes, then list every live cat creative by situation. A gap below 0.8, or fewer than four distinct cat situations, is the brief for your next batch.

Today's task takes 25 minutes. Export last quarter's revenue by species for your biggest market, count the live ads that show a cat as the main subject, and divide the second share by the first. Write the index at the top of your next creative brief.