• by Bill Duggan , Today

In advance of the Association of National Advertisers' March 25-27 Media Conference, I spoke with the event's host and Vice President-Head of Media & Digital Platforms for Consumer Health at Bayer Maria Givens about the topics du jour including artificial intelligence (AI), in-housing, and much more. Here's how it started.

Bill Duggan: How did you get started in this business?  

Maria Givens: I was a finance and marketing double major at Stern Business School at NYU. My senior year, I took a marketing elective for media planning taught by ANA’s own Bill Tucker. I was drawn to the combination of magic and logic in media, and this has become the north star for my career. I asked Professor Tucker for a job, he checked my grades in the class, set me up on an interview with MediaVest (where he was an EVP at the time), formerly of Publicis Groupe… and the rest is history!

Duggan: And your current role?

Givens: I now have the privilege of leading the in-house media and digital platforms organization as part of the U.S. leadership team for Bayer’s Consumer Health division.

To be able to lead a trailblazing team spanning paid and owned across strategy, programmatic, commerce, social, search, analytics and digital marketing -- while contributing to iconic brands that genuinely improve everyday health for Americans everywhere -- has been deeply rewarding.

Duggan: AI is the hottest topic these days.  What is your view?

Givens: AI needs to accelerate the strategy, not be the strategy. In our relentless pursuit of growth, we are exploring how predictive intelligence can leverage behavioral signals to indicate who will be next to buy our products. It’s not enough to rely on past purchase behavior or demographics.

We are triangulating macro consumer trends, predictive AI, and precision targeting to ensure Bayer has an outsized share of new-to-category growth. A second area we are leaning into is brand visibility in LLMs.

Fifty percent of brands expect to have a GEO strategy implemented in the next six months, per eMarketer. This is an exciting but overwhelming area of growth for all marketers. If the consumer is boss, commerce is everywhere, and LLMs are the gatekeepers. Brands will have to serve both the “human” boss and their new AI assistant.

Finally, while this may not be the sexiest AI answer, if marketers and brands are not focusing efforts on AI to enable productivity, their talent won’t have time to accelerate in new areas.

We’re leveraging external partners as well as internal agents to improve end-to-end marketing workflow integrations and visibility, media and creative optimizations, automating evergreen tasks like campaign reporting. I have talented trailblazers on my team who are creating their own agents to improve day-to-day tasks.

Our collective goal is to bring an AI-first mindset rooted in safety, privacy, and proper governance. 

Duggan: What else excites you about media in 2026?

Givens: First, media as a repeatable growth engine. Media planners, buyers, agencies and partners should consider themselves growth architects who are hyper-focused on delivering business outcomes for their brands and/or clients.

At Bayer, we have transformed our media and measurement philosophy in the last two years to deliver repeatable and sustainable growth. Advancements in measurement and analytics have made it possible to really isolate with deeper granularity what is driving performance beyond ROI to truly align to business outcomes, not just media outcomes. And we treat the Bayer approach as a scientific experiment where we are constantly testing and learning, iterating, improving, and scaling. 

Second is integration. Lines are blurred between what is paid, earned, shared, owned and commerce; what is media and what is creative; and there is a shift in how clients partner with agencies. At Bayer, we have improved growth fundamentals for brand, creative, media and measurement, and have transformed our agency ecosystem.

2026 will be the year where we integrate all these areas, underpinned by technology, data and AI, to drive amplified and proven impact.  

Duggan: Bayer has in-housed at least some of its media. Please discuss that.

Givens: Bayer is considered one of the early pioneers in the in-housing journey that we started seven years ago. We have hands-on-keys experts across every media discipline as well as brand.com and CRM.

The Bayer in-house team is hyper-focused on Bayer outcomes and is deeply embedded in our brand and customer ambitions. The greatest benefits are speed, agility, transparency, and integration. We also have a strong relationship with our agency partners who bring scale, data and thought leadership.

I firmly believe in having a hybrid in-house/agency model fluidly navigating a build-borrow-lease continuum based on a partnership model that delivers shared accountability where we both win.

Duggan: If you could “wave a magic wand,” what industry issue or problem would you fix?

Givens: If I had a magic wand, I would wish for an ad ecosystem that was fully accountable to people and brands, completely transparent, ethical and sustainable. 

Duggan: What are you watching/streaming now?

Givens: “All Her Fault” on Peacock for its incredible acting, controversial topic and as a conversation starter. “Riviera” on AMC+ for the stunning landscapes, glamour, and fashion.

Duggan: Finally, What are you most looking forward to as host of the ANA 2026 Media Conference?

Givens: Three things … amplifying voices and ideas that push our industry forward, curating conversations into tangible actions, and being inspired! 

Duggan: See you in Nashville, Maria.