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After several years of rapid expansion, pet industry growth is expected to slow down. Morgan Stanley's 2026 pet industry research projects U.S. spending could reach approximately $242 billion by 2030, with annual growth of around 4%. That's still growth, but a significant change from the firm's 2024 outlook, which projected approximately 7% annual growth and $261 billion in spending by 2030.
Pet ownership also declined slightly, from 69% of U.S. consumers surveyed in 2024 to 67% in 2026. At the same time, pet owners remain highly emotionally invested in their animals, veterinary care and services are taking a larger share of pet spending and consumers are becoming more selective about where their money goes.
The takeaway for pet marketers isn't that consumers have stopped spending on their pets. It's that pet brands may have to work harder to propel pet parents to spend.
The pet industry is moving from rapid growth to greater competition
During periods of rapid category growth, brands benefit simply from having more customers entering the market and existing customers increasing their spending. But that environment appears to be changing.
Morgan Stanley estimates that the U.S. pet industry grew nearly 20% in 2021, followed by average annual growth of approximately 9% through 2025. With growth now projected to slow to approximately 4% annually through 2030, the industry is becoming more competitive. For marketers, that puts greater emphasis on gaining market share rather than relying on category growth.
Pet brands need to answer increasingly important questions:
- Why should someone choose our product instead of a competitor's?
- What makes our brand worth paying more?
- Are we reaching consumers at the right points in their decision-making process?
- Are we retaining customers after their first purchase?
- Does our brand have enough credibility to be considered when consumers research their options?
Marketing strategies built primarily around awareness and customer acquisition may need to evolve into strategies that address the entire customer relationship.
Price matters, but perceived value matters more
Affordability is one of the most important factors shaping the pet market. Morgan Stanley found that younger pet owners, including Millennials and Gen Z consumers, continue to represent important pet parenting demographics but are also experiencing significant affordability pressure. That doesn't necessarily mean every pet brand needs to compete on price. Instead, brands need to communicate why their products are worth the cost.
Consider two premium pet products sitting next to each other on a shelf or appearing next to each other in search results. Similar pricing may not result in similar consumer perceptions. One brand might simply describe its ingredients or features. The other may clearly explain the purpose of those ingredients, provide expert-backed educational resources, display strong customer reviews and communicate exactly how the product supports a pet's needs. The second brand has given the consumer more reasons to justify the purchase.
Effective value messaging can include:
- Clear product differentiation
- Specific product benefits
- Educational content
- Reviews and customer experiences
- Expert or professional credibility
- Quality and ingredient transparency
- Guarantees or risk-reduction offers
- Subscription or loyalty benefits
Pet marketers shouldn't assume that a more price-conscious consumer is simply looking for the cheapest option. They're often looking for the option that feels most worth their money.
Trust is becoming an even more valuable marketing asset
Pet purchases frequently carry more emotional weight than purchases in other consumer categories. Food, supplements, wellness products, grooming products and other pet purchases can directly affect an animal's health or quality of life. So pet parents scrutinize the brands behind those products.
Morgan Stanley's 2026 research found that approximately 60% of pet owners identified veterinarians as a trusted source of pet-care information. That has implications well beyond veterinary marketing.
Pet brands should think about how credibility is built throughout the customer journey. For example, a pet wellness brand might support its product pages with expert-reviewed educational content. A pet food company might provide greater transparency around ingredients and nutritional benefits. An ecommerce brand might prioritize verified reviews and detailed product information.
Trust signals can also drive search visibility. As consumers increasingly use traditional search engines and AI tools to research products, brands benefit from creating clear, authoritative information about who they are, what they sell and why their products are credible. This makes strong website content important for both pet parents and the systems helping them discover brands.
Educational content can support customer acquisition
Pet marketing content has traditionally competed for searches such as "best dog food," "best cat toys" or other product-oriented terms. Those searches remain valuable, but consumers don't always begin their journey looking for a product.
They may start with a question, such as:
- Why is my dog scratching?
- How often should I brush my cat's teeth?
- What should I feed a senior dog?
- How much exercise does my puppy need?
- What's the difference between these ingredients?
These informational moments create opportunities for pet brands to build familiarity before a consumer is ready to purchase. They have become even more important as AI-powered search experiences provide direct answers to increasingly detailed questions.
An effective pet SEO and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) strategy should extend beyond product and category pages. Brands can develop clusters of useful content around the topics connected to their products, expertise and customers' needs. A pet dental brand, for example, shouldn't only try to rank its dental chews. It could build authority around canine oral health, brushing, dental disease prevention, professional cleanings and other related topics. That approach gives consumers more ways to discover the brand and gives search and AI platforms more context for understanding what the brand knows and sells.
Pet brands need to compete for existing customers too
Slower growth and slightly lower pet ownership make customer retention more important. Pet products can be particularly well suited to retention strategies because many categories involve repeat purchases. Food, treats, supplements, grooming products, litter and other consumables can create ongoing customer relationships. Marketing strategies should therefore consider what happens after the first conversion.
That might include:
- Email and SMS lifecycle campaigns
- Subscription programs
- Replenishment reminders
- Loyalty programs
- Personalized product recommendations
- Cross-selling
- Educational post-purchase content
- Customer review campaigns
- Win-back campaigns
Brands should look at customer lifetime value alongside customer acquisition cost. A campaign that appears expensive based only on the initial purchase may perform very differently when repeat purchases are considered. As category growth moderates, improving the value of existing customer relationships can become just as important as finding new ones.
Emotional connection is still a major advantage for pet brands
Economic pressure hasn't changed the role pets play in people's lives. Morgan Stanley's research found that 66% of pet parents considered their pets part of the family in 2026, up from 63% in 2024. That emotional connection remains one of the most powerful characteristics of the pet category.
Pet marketing shouldn't lose its emotional component simply because pet parents are becoming more price conscious. Instead, successful messaging may need to balance emotion with rational justification.
The emotional message might be: Give your dog the healthy life they deserve. The rational support might then explain the ingredients, research, product benefits, quality standards or expert recommendations that make the purchase worthwhile. Creative, messaging and product information can work together to address both sides of the decision.
Different pet parents may require different strategies
Another notable shift highlighted by Morgan Stanley is growing interest in cats, particularly among younger consumers. Affordability may be one factor. Cats generally have lower costs than dogs across several spending categories.
For pet marketers, the larger lesson is about segmentation. "The pet parent" is not a single audience. Dog parents and cat parents may behave differently. New pet parents may have different questions than experienced ones. A consumer buying premium veterinary-recommended food may have very different motivations from someone shopping for toys.
Age, household income, geography, pet type, pet age and purchase history can all affect what someone needs from a brand. Pet marketing campaigns should reflect those differences. Paid media audiences, landing pages, email campaigns, creative and content strategies will better generate momentum when they're built around meaningful customer segments rather than a generic pet parent persona.
Ecommerce experiences have to work harder
Consumers evaluating purchases more carefully creates another challenge: weak ecommerce experiences become harder to overcome. Pet brands should evaluate what happens between an ad or search result and the completed transaction.
Can shoppers quickly understand what the product does? Are the benefits clear? Are reviews easy to find? Does the site answer common questions? Are shipping costs and subscription options transparent? Does the mobile experience make purchasing easy? Even strong advertising can't compensate indefinitely for a website that introduces unnecessary friction.
Conversion rate optimization should be part of the broader pet marketing strategy. Improving product pages, simplifying checkout, testing offers, strengthening calls to action and adding relevant trust signals can help brands get more value from traffic they're already paying to acquire.
Search behavior is changing along with consumer behavior
Pet brands are competing in a search environment that looks very different from just a few years ago. Consumers can discover products through Google, social platforms, retailers, marketplaces and AI assistants. A single purchase journey may touch several of those channels.
Someone might discover a product through social media, search the brand on Google, read Reddit discussions, check reviews on a retailer's website and ask an AI assistant to compare it with another product before purchasing. Pet marketing strategies need to account for this fragmented journey.
SEO remains important, but visibility increasingly extends beyond traditional rankings. Brands should consider whether their products and expertise are represented accurately across:
- Traditional organic search
- AI-generated search results
- Answer engines and AI assistants
- Ecommerce marketplaces
- Review platforms
- Social media
- Industry publications and third-party websites
This is where SEO, AEO, digital PR, content strategy and brand authority increasingly overlap. The goal isn't simply to rank for a keyword. It's to make the brand visible and credible wherever consumers conduct research.
What should pet brands do differently?
The shift from rapid category expansion toward slower, more competitive growth doesn't require pet brands to abandon their existing marketing strategies. But it does require them to evaluate whether those strategies still match today's consumer.
Pet marketers should consider five priorities.
1. Strengthen your positioning
Make it easy for consumers to understand what differentiates your brand and why your products are worth choosing.
2. Invest in trust and authority
Use expert perspectives, educational resources, reviews, transparent product information and credible third-party mentions to reduce uncertainty.
3. Build content around customer questions
Expand beyond transactional product keywords and answer the questions consumers ask throughout their research process.
4. Focus on retention as well as acquisition
Use subscriptions, lifecycle marketing, loyalty programs and personalization to increase customer lifetime value.
5. Optimize the entire customer journey
Paid media, SEO, AEO, social, ecommerce and retention shouldn't operate independently. Each channel should reinforce a consistent brand experience.
Pet industry growth is changing but not disappearing
The U.S. pet market could still approach a quarter-trillion dollars by 2030. That's a substantial opportunity. But slower growth means pet brands may no longer benefit from the same rising tide that characterized the industry's rapid expansion earlier in the decade.
Consumers remain deeply attached to their pets, but they're also dealing with affordability pressures and becoming more deliberate about purchases. At the same time, they're discovering and evaluating brands across an increasingly complicated mix of search engines, AI platforms, retailers, social channels and review sites. The brands positioned to compete in that environment will be those that give consumers clear reasons to choose them and continue choosing them.
That requires more than increased ad spend. It requires a connected pet marketing strategy built around consumer insight, brand positioning, trust, visibility, conversion and long-term customer relationships.
At Trone, we've spent more than 25 years helping pet brands understand their audiences and creating powerful integrated marketing strategies. From brand strategy and ecommerce to paid media, SEO and emerging AI search channels, we help pet companies activate marketing programs designed around how today's pet parents actually discover, evaluate and choose brands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the pet industry still growing?
Yes. Morgan Stanley's 2026 research projects U.S. pet industry spending could reach approximately $242 billion by 2030. However, annual growth is expected to moderate to approximately 4%, making competition for consumer spending increasingly important.
How is pet consumer behavior changing?
Pet parents remain emotionally invested in their pets but are facing greater affordability pressure and becoming more selective about purchases. This increases the importance of value, product differentiation, trust, reviews and clear messaging.
What should pet brands focus on in their marketing strategy?
Pet brands should consider customer acquisition and retention, brand positioning, consumer trust, ecommerce conversion, SEO and AEO, audience segmentation and customer lifetime value as parts of an integrated strategy.
Why is trust important in pet marketing?
Many pet purchases relate directly to an animal's health, nutrition or quality of life. Consumers often seek credible information before making these decisions, making expert perspectives, reviews, transparency and educational content valuable trust signals.
How is AI changing pet marketing?
Consumers can now use AI search experiences and assistants to research pet care questions, compare products and discover brands. Pet brands can adapt by creating authoritative, clearly structured content and strengthening their overall digital presence so search engines and AI systems can better understand their expertise and products.
