People in the marketing business know that the true power AI unlocks has more to do with improving strategies and targeting, and less to do with content creation. Pharmaceutical and consumer health giant Bayer has been partnering with AI-powered ad tech company Chalice for about a year, seeking ways to better target potential customers for some of its over-the-counter health brands. They exclusively revealed to me the smashing success they saw with a pilot program using display ads in Amazon\u2019s demand-side platform to get new customers to purchase One A Day vitamins. <\/p>\n
While the campaign ran on Amazon, it wasn\u2019t just to win over new e-commerce shoppers; many consumers still buy these products in physical stores. Bayer Vice President and Head of Media and Digital Platforms Maria Givens said the company is interested in powering the entirety of the consumer journey\u2014something that Chalice can help with given their array of data from a variety of sources. <\/p>\n
Through the partnership, Chalice uses data to determine which people are the most likely to be receptive to One A Day online display ads, then its AI negotiates prices for the ads with Amazon\u2019s DSP. Givens, Chalice cofounder and COO Ali Manning, and Bayer Senior Manager of Media Strategy Alexis Gossard talked me through the process. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.<\/p>\n
Until next time.<\/p>\n
This is the published version of Forbes\u2019 CMO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief marketing officers and other messaging-focused leaders. Click here<\/a> to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. Artificial Intelligence<\/p>\n Smith Collection\/Gado\/Getty Images<\/p>\n As AI gets better, it\u2019s appearing more and more online\u2014and aside from a few blatantly obvious examples<\/a>, many users can\u2019t readily identify content that was computer generated. This week, Anthropic announced<\/a> it will begin<\/a> adding an invisible digital watermark to text and images created on its Claude platform, a move required by the EU\u2019s AI law. For images, the move brings Anthropic in line with other AI and digital image editing companies, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Adobe. <\/p>\n But the proposal to digitally watermark AI-generated text and code created by Claude has many users up in arms. People commonly use AI to proofread human-written text, come up with ideas, make suggestions, or draft simple forms and basic text. The new watermark will stay on the text\u2014regardless how much AI was involved in the final product. As it stands now, a short story generated entirely by AI will have the same marking as one written by a human and proofread by AI, calling its usefulness into question.<\/p>\n Social Media<\/p>\n Meta was ordered to pay<\/a> nearly $1 billion in fines by a New Mexico judge, who ruled the social media giant created a \u201cpublic nuisance\u201d over its handling of child safety on its platforms, and was a \u201csignificant\u201d contributor to the state\u2019s teen mental health crisis. The total\u2014$942 million in all\u2014comes from $567 million ordered by the judge for a fund to pay for awareness and prevention campaigns, as well as treat teens who were harmed by its platforms; plus $375 million previously ordered by a jury at the conclusion of a trial this spring.<\/p>\n In his 68-page ruling<\/a>, Judge Bryan Biedscheid compared Meta to a polluting factory. \u201c[J]ust as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta\u2019s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement,\u201d the ruling states.<\/p>\n Meta communications chief Andy Stone wrote in a post on X that the company disagreed with the ruling and plans to appeal. <\/p>\n Regardless of how the appeal goes, this may be just the beginning of Meta\u2019s legal problems. On Monday<\/a>, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Meta and several other social media companies in their bid to dismiss thousands of lawsuits that accused the platforms of being addictive to young people. The social media platforms\u2014which also included Snap and the owners of TikTok, YouTube and Roblox\u2014argued existing law protects them from such lawsuits. The appellate court disagreed, ruling that the law only provides a liability defense, and said the cases could go forward.<\/p>\n Meta is back in a California court today for the beginning of another trial in which 29 state attorneys general accused the company of engineering Facebook and Instagram to be addicting to children. The trial is expected to last seven weeks, Reuters reports<\/a>. <\/p>\n On MessageExclusive: How AI Grew ROI For One A Day Ads By 60%<\/p>\n From left, Bayer Vice President and Head of Media and Digital Platforms Maria Givens, Bayer Senior Manager of Media Strategy Alexis Gossard, and Chalice cofounder and COO Ali Manning.<\/p>\n Bayer, Chalice<\/p>\n AI-powered online display ad targeting has proven to be a success story for Bayer and its partnership with ad tech company Chalice. I talked to Bayer Vice President and Head of Media and Digital Platforms Maria Givens, Chalice cofounder and COO Ali Manning, and Bayer Senior Manager of Media Strategy Alexis Gossard about a recent pilot for One A Day brand targeting on Amazon\u2019s demand-side platform. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity. <\/p>\n What does the AI do? Where does it come into play, and how is it different from something that is more manual?<\/p>\n Givens: It is an amalgamation of traditional business and data intelligence within a proprietary AI algorithm. You\u2019re not just chasing AI for the sake of AI. You are leveraging macro intelligence and your own business intelligence. The AI algorithm is the empowerment layer, and it\u2019s helping to accelerate the work that you do in order to drive the outcome that you want.<\/p>\n Manning: We have our AI technology take panel sales data that we get from different trusted partners that lets us see who has been buying One A Day for a long time, who is a new-to-brand customer, and who isn\u2019t yet a customer. We can model out who is most likely to become a new-to-brand customer based on that data. <\/p>\n We use LLMs to bring different audience datasets together. The LLMs can read the context between different audience datasets. In traditional modeling, you might just say, \u2018This tranche of users look like they\u2019re most likely to be new-to-brand, so we\u2019re going to buy those 10 million consumers.\u2019 We\u2019re scoring every individual for the audience context around them compared to the audience context around Bayer\u2019s new-to-brand customers, then we score them on how likely they are to be a new-to-brand customer. Then we go price that in market. We say everyone is a potential new-to-brand customer for Bayer, and they all have different values depending on how likely they are to reach for One A Day on the shelf. You\u2019re paying for how likely they are to [buy the brand].<\/p>\n How long have you used this strategy, and what kind of results did you get?<\/p>\n Gossard: We started this strategy in Q4 of last year. That was the pilot program, but it had so much success, this is part of our regimen and it continues to perform. Until the results don\u2019t prove out, we will continue to keep this as part of our strategy.<\/p>\n In the first quarter we ran this, and then every quarter thereafter, we\u2019ve seen four times more effectiveness. It\u2019s had a 60% higher incremental ROI compared to the other targeting we were doing at [Amazon\u2019s demand-side platform]. Predictive audiences have become a part of what we\u2019re doing to drive the business.<\/p>\n What does Bayer have planned for the next year through this partnership based on what you have learned here?<\/p>\n Givens: One: Scale the success that we\u2019ve had on One A Day to more of our brands. Two: Work on [predicting] attrition. We\u2019ve proven incrementality and new-to-brand [targeting]. I think attrition would be the next step. Three: Linking to creative personalization, and seeing if we can do that from an automated perspective as well once we\u2019ve identified the [customer] value. Maybe there\u2019s an insight around [customer behavior] depending on the value, and that will influence the creative that we serve.<\/p>\n Gossard: Right now, this is only running in the [Amazon] DSP, so primarily in display as a media channel. But we did pilot and test a similar type of strategy with Chalice for CTV. That\u2019s another way to scale and grow: Finding the right way to utilize this technology in different mediums outside of just display.<\/p>\n What advice would you give to CMOs that are considering using AI to better target their advertising?<\/p>\n Givens\u2019 advice:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t chase after the AI. Stay true to the business problems that you are trying to solve. A lot of times, it\u2019s really around what are the gaps and what are the challenges in your strategy? You\u2019ve got to jump in and test and learn. You can\u2019t wait for it to be perfect. It\u2019s not going to be perfect. The things that didn\u2019t work are actually important for us to continue to iterate and learn from\u2014just as much as the successes. Don\u2019t underestimate or outsource the human intelligence. AI can solve a lot of things. It cannot solve everything. It\u2019s not going to come up with the hypotheses like this. Sure, it can ingest data sources, but we\u2019re human beings who have been living and breathing this business for so long. We\u2019re in rooms, and the best ideas have come when we\u2019re in rooms together, trying to understand what\u2019s the next challenge that needs to be solved.Bring in partners that you believe understand your business outcomes [and] are willing to co-create for you. The questions we have, the business challenges that we have, are not off-the-shelf solutions. This is all custom work. We\u2019re looking for partners who are ready and willing to be interoperable with our data and are really in a lab trying to create net new with us. Find the partners who want to co-create with you in a brand-safe, transparent way.<\/p>\n Manning\u2019s advice:<\/p>\n If I was a CMO vetting an AI company, [I would] say, \u2018Where\u2019s your data coming from?\u2019 If they can\u2019t answer that very specifically and straightforwardly, and give you access to audit that data, they are selling something that’s either not serving your needs directly or might not even truly be AI modeling. The most important part of any AI technology is the humans who give it instructions. Second is the data that fuels it. What\u2019s important here is you\u2019re able to find a data source that [you] trust. It\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s transparent. So many AI companies today are like, \u2018Just hand us over your data, and we\u2019ll give you a result.\u2019 [If you do that,] your data\u2019s empowering their technology. They\u2019re the ones truly benefiting from it, and it could probably benefit your competitors. But if you work with a partner who\u2019s transparent, auditable and works with your business goals, it becomes your proprietary competitive advantage.Strategies + Advice<\/p>\n A big part of BET President Louis Carr\u2019s philosophy is serving customers\u2014not making them wait. Here are ways<\/a> he\u2019s turned that customer-first approach into results.<\/p>\n We all have first impressions of people, but they may be unfairly influenced by our past experiences. Here\u2019s how to push through the fog and get an evidence-based first look<\/a> at others.<\/p>\n Quiz<\/p>\n Which of the following people who was known as a child is now older and releasing his own music?<\/p>\n A. Ryan Kaji of \u201cRyan\u2019s World\u201d<\/p>\n B. Park Geonroung from Pinkfong\u2019s \u201cBaby Shark\u201d video<\/p>\n C. Spencer Elden from the cover of Nirvana\u2019s \u201cNevermind\u201d<\/p>\n Angus T. Jones of \u201cTwo and a Half Men\u201d<\/p>\n