Gutis
Twelve pharmaceutical brands, one programmatic framework, zero cannibalization.
The challenge
Gutis (HBM), one of Costa Rica’s leading pharmaceutical groups, runs a portfolio of 12 consumer health brands across flu, allergy and women’s health. In a market with finite audience depth, brands in overlapping categories were competing for the same demographic pools, creating a real risk of bid cannibalization and frequency fatigue. The goal was to sustain an always-on presence for every brand without an exponential increase in budget, while meeting strict pharmaceutical advertising standards.
What we did
Deployed a multi-tiered audience strategy inside a unified DV360 hierarchy, engineered to isolate each brand’s audience universe while extracting efficiency across the portfolio. We mapped Custom Intent and In-Market segments to symptom-based needs and set cross-brand exclusions so brands in the same category served as negative audiences for one another. We diversified inventory beyond a single source: YouTube Bumpers for recall, Shorts for mobile engagement, Skippable In-Stream for consideration, plus Open Auction display and programmatic video publishers. A monthly optimization loop maintained publisher whitelists, excluded low-quality apps and exchanges, and reallocated budget toward line items with stronger view-through rates and CPM stability, all tracked in GA4 and Looker.
Results
Incremental monthly reach came in at 135% of plan (+35%), display CPM dropped 24% and YouTube CPM dropped 10%, with portfolio spend landing within 1% of budget. In specific segments, such as the Emma brand, the strategy delivered a 733% increase in reach over the initial plan. The framework has since been institutionalized as Gutis’s permanent always-on model.
