Bayer Consumer Health • Moving Digital Media Ops In-House For Greater Control

Bayer’s Consumer Health Division brings consumers some of the world’s best-known and most trusted over-the-counter medications, nutritional supplements and other self-care products. In 2018, Bayer Consumer Health US sought to make its digital advertising more responsive, effective and cost-efficient. So the company embarked on a plan to bring digital ad operations in-house. 

The goal of transitioning to an in-house shop was to improve performance and transparency while reducing fees, improving speed to market and developing data insights for smarter decision-making. They also wanted to broaden and deepen digital expertise across their organization. To execute on this vision, Bayer partnered with Monks to support the transition and help build out the in-house team and systems.

Our team worked with Bayer to develop a two-phased approach to digital media self-sufficiency. In phase one, we took interim control of campaigns and technologies across two dozen brands while we helped Bayer establish frameworks and processes for digital ad buying that would drive efficiency at scale.

As a first step, we helped Bayer gain access to underlying campaign data and identify opportunities to reduce or eliminate fees from digital media buys. Bayer brand expertise, coupled with access to data, immediately unlocked opportunities for the team to quickly gather insights and make them actionable. Data fueled the creation of a highly complex but unified taxonomy to assist with analysis and provide a consistent data feedback loop. We integrated cleaner data into dashboards, giving the Bayer team fast and easy ways to interact with data and uncover insights. With ownership of media costs, weekly sales, profit data and competitive reports, the Bayer team was empowered to make optimization decisions that would have the most meaningful impact.

To build a self-sufficient team and ensure a smooth transition, we worked with Bayer to create and establish job descriptions, communication flow and performance and workflow standards. We implemented a staggered transition plan, with a period of overlapping support, so Bayer could hire and train the necessary talent to take over day-to-day ownership of media, search, social, programmatic, analytics and strategy—all achieved two months ahead of schedule.

Given the success of the Consumer Health engagement and the strength of our partnership, Bayer sought Monks’ advice and support on digital transformations for the Pharma and Crop Science divisions.