In the past, animals had more straightforward, functional roles, like hunting, guarding, or shepparding.
Today there is a much more emotional role they play as well.
They're treated like royalty amongst households, even tokenized into billion-dollar assets, and rising as media stars thanks to "petfluencers" giving them the spotlight.
The confluence of a few factors: 1) rise of the importance humans place on pets, 2) "petfluencer" creator economy, and 3) financialization of said relationships is going to lead to a pretty enormous opportunity, especially for the younger generations.
Here a few general assertions:
Status symbol shift: In a world where the cost of having a pet is increasing, ownership of pets will increasingly be associated as a form of status. Human ego and the innate desire for social recognition will fuel a much bigger surge in status-driven behaviors like digital flexing. This can span from social media presence to increased spending on goods, accessories, and experiences for pets that project one's own digital persona and lifestyle.
Rising costs lead to more virtual pet ownership: As the rising costs of pet ownership push some prospective owners out of the market ($15k-$45k+ lifetime costs), their excess demand is likely to shift toward virtual pets and gamified companion experiences.
Pet generated content (PGC): PGC will further accelerate, permeate, and be remixed throughout the web, amlifying virality. Starting with more first party content like viral pet reactions and then "sticker-ized" and "clipped" into relatable video content.
More monetization experiments: Today it is considered taboo for the average person to launch their own token. More pet owners may find it easier to launch and monetize their pets' existing social influence rather than themselves first. There's less social pressure this way. In more tame examples, pet owners may seek next gen monetization tools that help to better monetize vs in crowded traditional social media.
Petfluencers as a side hustle grows in mindshare. Pet influencers' content already has a higher engagement rate compared to the worldwide engagement rate. This solves for some of the cold start problems with content creation today. The majority of pet influencers today are micro-influencers at ~44% and crypto rails can help them monetize faster while also introducing ownership within the creator/fans relationships.
Secular trends supporting these opportunities:
1. Pet industry market growth and ownership
Americans are projected to spend a total of $150.6 billion on their pets by the end of '24. According to projections, U.S. pet spending will total almost $200 billion in 2030.
Americans are expected to spend $150.6 billion on pets in 2024, with projections reaching nearly $200 billion by 2030. The pet industry is growing almost twice as fast as overall consumer spending, despite a slight post-COVID dip in ownership. Global pet sales are set to hit $341 billion in 2024, potentially reaching $500 billion by 2030, with companies like Mars, Nestlé, and Colgate also expanding their presence in the sector.
Younger demographics increasingly prioritizing their pets give a preview of what's next:
Of the 66% of U.S. households with a pet, 33% are millennials, followed by Generation X at 25% and baby boomers at 24%, according to the most recent (APPA) National Pet Owners Survey.
Gen Z spends the most on pets, allocating $148.50 monthly and 35% of their holiday gift budget, compared to millennials' $136.20 monthly and 22% allocation (Source: survey by by Talker Research).
Narrative violation: Pet ownership is rising rapidly in China
Interestingly, while ownership has receded in the US post covid , the household penetration rate continues to rise in China.
Source: Daxue consulting
Why? This can be attributed to a number of factors ranging from 1) increasing costs of raising a child to 2) declining marriage and 3) fertility rates. Pet ownership is increasingly serving more of an emotional purpose as well.
In some ways, pets are the new kids.
Another subtrend is the rise of cat food samples, with cat snacks the leading sample products by sales growth growing 16x from '19 to '23. This mirrors the success of 'try before you buy' strategies for people that's taken off, as pet owners increasingly seek the best for their furry companions, treating them like new family royalty.
Rise of the petfluencers
If you are on IG, I'm sure you or either a friend have made a separate IG for a pet. Apparently, being a petfluencer is a thing now.
Research by ManyPet shows that 35% of owners have created accounts for their pets and that 1/4 of owners are trying to turn them into media stars. 40% of respondents actually prefer to fill their feeds with their pets vs pics of themselves or others.
Over two-thirds indicated pets are included amongst their best friends while over half spend more time with their pets than they do with their own family.
More importantly, across all tiers the engagement rate for pet influencers is far higher than worldwide engagement rates. This is driven by pet content being more relatable and emotionally resonating with audiences. This is an attractive sign for both the desire for pet influencers to want to create more and also for brands willing to engage.
Explosion of pet generated content (PGC)
The meme-fication of IRL content such as pet pictures, videos, and more into re-usable content formats for memes across social media is a big reason for the explosion in mindshare of PGC. Putting memes on internet rails is simply more scalable. If you look across IG reels, you'll see many videos that stich together these clipped pet memes to portray actual relatable stories.
Pets have taken a more public facing role since the rise of social media with owners eager to showcase and in many cases, content farm using them.
Do you remember the post on the rise of faceless channels? Now imagine on top of all of this pet mindshare, animal centric ai-gen content layered in as well such as accounts like Mpminds (Behind the "meow meow meow meow cat vidoes"). This is for another time but there'll probably be some big exploration around scaling pet IP view other verticals (gaming, entertainment, etc) while attributing back to the owner.
Monetization
As mentioned before the majority of pet influencers today are micro-influencers for whom it is harder to monetize on platforms like IG. With crypto, creators earn instantly without needing sponsorship or brand deals.
There are number of different pathways in which crypto rails can benefit owners. Whether experimenting with launching a pet branded meme coin or something less volatile like creator tipping, content minting, etc, creators should have plenty of optionality.
There are number of products that have already shown the way for creators like Zora, Drakula, Drip and more. Furrend is a great example of platform built specifically for pet content creators to build, grow, and monetize their content and community. Many creators on Furrend are already earning more than they do on IG and Tiktok.
Closing Thoughts
As a long-time pet owner and lover, I've always had an appreciation for pets. Have watched the industry evolve too with The Farmer's Dog, offering human-grade dog food, grow into a multi-billion dollar company. Simply put, humans increasingly now invest in their pets.
So what are paths the future may hold? We likely see a further bifurcation of "pets" across actual living pets, virtual pets, and robotic pets. In a way, I could see all of them offering various forms of companionship, theurapatic support, entertainment and more. The common thread is people love pets and that will never change.
Actual pets: I believe the strongest emotional connection will remain with actual pets at the very least for the foreseeable future. Social media is serving as a huge accelerant in attention around pets.
Virtual pets: With lifetime costs of pet ownership ranging from $15k-$45k and rising, this opens to door to the long tail of virtual pets. As VR/AR devices further proliferate, there are going to be some really interactive experiences that they can enable fun pet ownership but without the hassles associated with actual pets. On the other hand, more financialized games with pets like Frenpet can also push the envelope on the design space.
Robotic pets: This feels the most dystopian but it's already happening today at small scall. Hyperintelligent pets that can be guardians, friends, assists, and entertainers and more.
The future will get pretty funky. For now it seems their main benefit is being more utility focused. If the tech behind the robots improves and they can better tap into emotional support over time as robotic companions, this could accelerate market demand.
In case you are wondering what in the world you actually just read if you made it this far, don't worry I am thinking the same thing. I think the rise of pets and companionship is a huge market with a wide open design space. I'm excited to see what kinds of services and businesses can be built around this industry.
There are entirely different subcategories within the pet category that are interesting in their own right. These are just a few musings (ie what are the implications if pets are increasingly treated as family members, new mediums through which to interact with virtual pets, the non-zero chance our robopet overlords take over, etc). To me, the future growth of the pet industry is inevitable and the underlying user demand is there. I didn't talk about crypto as much here but there'll be cool opportunities to integrate it in a meaningful way (when depin robopets, just kidding or am I?).
