Background

Part of the Dulux Group, Yates is one of New Zealand’s most recognized gardening brands – manufacturing and selling a wide range of seeds, fertilisers, lawn care, pest control and other outdoor products.

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The Challenge

Rainmakers (part of Attivo Media), is a leading digital agency in New Zealand. Yates tasked them with running a full funnel campaign for Yates - from brand awareness and recall lift through to conversions and in store purchases.

As a gardening brand, many of Yates’ products require very specific weather conditions to be effective. Sunshine, rainfall, and ground conditions can directly influence whether consumers are ready to plant, fertilize or invest in gardening supplies.

The challenge: running ads for lawn treatment when the ground was too wet, or for fertilizers right after heavy rain, risked wasting budget and showing irrelevant messaging. Rainmakers therefore needed a way to dynamically control media delivery in real time and across multiple channels in response to real world weather conditions. This would be the key to maximizing campaign efficiency, achieving better message relevancy and cut-through, and maximize ROI.

The Solution

Using WeatherAds, Rainmakers created automated weather-based rules for their respective DV360, Meta, and Google Ads campaigns.

• Activation: Ads were activated during sunny or cloudy days, when gardening was most favourable.

• Supression: Campaigns were paused automatically during periods of rainfall, or if rain had occurred in the preceding 48 hours for specific product lines.

This setup gave Rainmakers precise control over when and where Yates’ ads were delivered and ensured contextual message-match that chimed with consumer mindset and purchase intent.

The Results

By synchronizing ad delivery / campaign activation windows with localized weather conditions, WeatherAds enabled Rainmakers to:

• Save 49 hours of campaign management time in Google Ads alone, thanks to automation that eliminated the need for manual switches.

• Minimise wasted ad spend by ensuring ads only ran when consumers were most receptive to gardening products.

• Increase creative relevancy by aligning messaging with conditions that directly influence purchase intent.

• Improve client satisfaction, with Yates praising the efficiency gains and requesting WeatherAds again for their 2025 campaign activity.

Client Feedback

"This integration offers a powerful solution for optimising advertising spend by factoring in weather conditions. It enhances creative messaging and, most importantly, helps minimise wasted spend for brands or products where weather plays a crucial role in the purchasing decision or application process."
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“Spring is a very important time of the year for Yates and New Zealand’s ever changing weather adds an extra layer of complexity to our media campaigns. Using smart data solutions, WeatherAds helped us to minimize wasted spend for Yates products where weather plays a crucial role in the purchasing decision or application process."

- Shannon Lightbody, Digital Media Director, Rainmakers

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