Ring's Search Party turns neighbourhood doorbell cameras into a lost-dog search grid

Roughly 10 million pets go missing in the United States each year, and before Search Party the owner's options were flyers and driving around shouting the dog's name, as Ring's chief inventor Jamie Siminoff put it. The raw material for something better was already sitting in Ring's own app: the Neighbors community logged more than a million lost-or-found pet posts in a year, from an estimated 90 million dogs across 60 million US households.

Search Party for Dogs connected the two. Launched in late 2025 and opened nationwide in February 2026, it turns a missing-dog report into a live query: nearby participating outdoor Ring cameras automatically look for visual matches with AI-powered computer vision and alert their owners, who confirm the match and choose whether to share footage with the searcher. Non-Ring households can join through the free Neighbors app, and Ring pledged $1 million to equip over 4,000 US animal shelters with cameras to widen the grid, working with groups like Petco Love and Best Friends Animal Society.

Since launch the feature has reunited more than a dog a day with its owners — including a service dog in Arizona found within hours of a post. Ring put the feature at the centre of its first Super Bowl commercial in February 2026, and the work was shortlisted at Cannes Lions 2026 in Creative Data, in both the data-driven product innovation and purpose-driven data solutions subcategories.

Millions of doorbell cameras became a lost-dog search party

The cameras were already installed and already watching; the feature only had to point existing motion detection at a shared query, so the search grid cost almost nothing to stand up.

Consent is per alert, not per account: the camera owner reviews every potential match and decides whether the footage moves, which kept the network voluntary.

The free Neighbors app let households without Ring hardware participate, expanding coverage beyond the installed base at zero marginal cost.

The $1 million shelter programme extends the same grid to where lost dogs actually surface first, buying network growth with purpose rather than advertising.

A network you already own can take a second job its buyers never signed up for, if every node can say no. The per-alert opt-in made neighbours participants, not targets.

By February 2026 the feature was available across the United States and open to anyone through the Neighbors app, and Ring's Super Bowl debut put the search party in front of the largest US television audience of the year. The company reported reunions running at more than one dog a day, committed $1 million of camera equipment to 4,000-plus shelters, and invited further nonprofit partnerships via a dedicated contact. The campaign was shortlisted at Cannes Lions 2026 in Creative Data in two subcategories.