Bayer Animal Health is leveraging social and mobile behavioral data to target dog owners on smartphones with a new ad campaign timed to build brand awareness as the flea and tick season gets into full swing.

The campaign for K9 Advantix dog flea and tick collars leverages Pinsight Media +?s Interest Graph to define a segment of users indicating an interest in dogs and dog health as an indicator of purchase intent. The ads are being delivered across Pinsight?s network of mobile applications.

?With Bayer, we are helping them target true pet lovers,? said Evan Conway, vice president of monetization and strategy at Pinsight Media +, Kansas City, MO. ?Not just based on demos but pet lovers based on a variety of things, what Web sites they go to from a mobile perspective, what Twitter accounts they follow, what apps they use, keywords they tweet, Reddits they follow.?

Man?s best friend
The campaign launched on April 17 and is running through September 30. It consists of banner ads inside mobile applications that when clicked on take users to a mobile landing page with more information about the product.

One of the ads show a dog and its owner alongside the copy "for the love of dog."

In another example, the ad simply says K9 Advantix II with the Bayer trademark.

On the mobile optimized landing page, consumers can compare different brands, get a coupon, sign up to receive more information and find nearby stores where the product is available. It also calls out a few customer reviews and includes a button that links to more reviews with tapped.

By delivering the ads to consumers who have shown a previous in dogs, Bayer Animal Health is expecting a higher return on investment for the campaign.

The effort is an example of how marketers are increasingly looking to fine-tune their mobile strategies, with behavioral targeting ? a strategy that is popular on desktop but that has been difficult to replicate on mobile because of the lack of cookies ? being one method for accomplishing this.

Crunching the data
Pinsight Media +, which is a mobile advertising subsidiary of Sprint, created the segment of dog lovers by leveraging Sprint?s mobile behavioral data

Other information used to create the segment included Web sites visited from a mobile device such as Petsmart.com, Petco.com and 1-800 Pet Meds, apps used such as Tagg, Pet Phone and Pet First Aid.

From a social perspective, data such as what Twitter accounts are followed, such as @PetSmart, @Petco and @animalplanet as well as keywords used on social posts, such as dog, pets and puppy.

?By combining with Sprint, we have access to an amazing wealth of interesting data,? Mr. Conway said.

?In the past, we only used it in aggregated forms to talk about mobile trends,? he said. ?More recently, we have aggressively tried to do opt-in program to get those people to agree to let us deliver more relevant stuff to them.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York