Photo Source: Claritin
Bayer is transforming its approach to digital advertising, preparing for a future defined by intelligent, self-optimizing marketing systems. By moving its custom programmatic algorithm in-house, the company is marking a clear shift from relying on external automation partners to embracing what it calls agentic intelligence, AI that doesn’t just follow instructions but continuously learns, adapts, and makes smarter decisions in real time.
This move gives Bayer’s marketing teams greater control over how campaigns are executed and optimized, allowing for deeper transparency and more precise data use across channels. The strategy is already showing concrete results: the new model has driven a 6% increase in Claritin brand sales among new customers, proving the potential of AI-guided media performance.
Supporting this evolution are key technology partners like Chalice AI, which powers the algorithmic optimization layer, and Snowflake, whose data infrastructure enables scalable, AI-ready audience targeting. Together, they’re helping Bayer build a more adaptive, intelligent, and efficient marketing ecosystem designed for the next generation of programmatic advertising.
Bayer’s U.S. consumer health division is taking another step toward intelligent, data-driven marketing by deepening its partnership with Chalice AI, the custom algorithm platform behind its programmatic ad models. Together, they’ve been developing tailored algorithms that target audiences through major demand-side platforms such as The Trade Desk and Google.
The collaboration has now evolved into a new phase: Chalice has built an application that operates directly within Bayer’s Snowflake data platform, allowing the company’s marketing team to adjust and refine its models internally, without ever transferring sensitive data outside the system.
This integration illustrates a broader shift toward what’s being called a composable ad-tech architecture, a flexible framework in which brands can plug in or remove specific tools as needed. For Bayer, it’s also a significant move toward the emerging vision of agentic trading, where programmatic advertising could eventually be powered by AI agents capable of making autonomous, real-time decisions to optimize campaigns with minimal human input.
“The massive amounts of data we have generated from media and creative and ad serving and all those things, live in Snowflake,” Khara Hutchinson, head of programmatic at Bayer, said.
Most brands develop custom algorithms to help them reach new audiences across both the open web and large, closed ecosystems like Meta and Google, though the latter present greater challenges for model integration. As Hutchinson from Bayer explained, expanding the brand’s reach, whether by growing the overall category or increasing market share within it, is considered a major success. The company’s consumer health division, which manages media buying internally, is also bringing its trading algorithms closer to those in-house teams to enable faster optimization and tighter strategic alignment. Importantly, Bayer’s programmatic strategy remains unchanged despite the recent appointment of IPG as its global agency partner, signaling that the company intends to maintain direct control over its algorithmic media operations.
