MC Interview: India could become leading exporter of AI technology, says Meta CMO Alex Schultz

During the interview with Moneycontrol’s Vikas SN, Schultz discussed how AI is reshaping marketing, how trends in India compare with other markets, and working with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Earlier this year, Meta also announced an upcoming book on digital marketing and advertising, written by Schultz, which he believes can serve as a foundational guide for all the new digital marketing channels. The book, called Click Here: The Art and Science of Digital Marketing and Advertising, is expected to be released on October 7, 2025. Edited Excerpts:

It’s been a fast-paced visit in India for you. What have been some of the key takeaways, and what has surprised you the most?

My three takeaways are the excitement about growth, the quick 10-minute deliveries, and the digital infrastructure that India has built out in the last 10 years.

All my conversations with CMOs and CXOs here have been so refreshing. I just came from Europe and Cannes, talking to a lot of European CMOs, who often spoke about adhering to regulations and things that are getting in the way of their growth.

Indian CXOs and CMOs are however very excited about growth and the opportunity in the domestic market, and about the chance to export globally, especially services, AI agents, AI chatbots, and AI agencies. We know India has a lot of growth ahead of it, but it feels like India has probably struck the right balance in regulation, where business is still excited about growth and at the same time the consumer is being protected.

The second thing is quick delivery, which many people tell me is just an Indian thing. I don't think it is. Many things have come out of India in terms of the Internet. India got to mobile before the rest of the world. I can see 10-minute going global, and that’s really interesting because it's changing consumer shopping behaviors.

The last one is the infrastructure build-out. I hadn't fully internalised how much India has built out its infrastructure, both digital and physical, over the last decade. I thought it was big, but it's bigger than I realised.

How do marketing trends in India compare with those in the United States and Europe?

India is the leading market in many areas such as mobile users and small businesses (SMBs). In some cases, it’s the leading market outside China, and in others, it’s simply the leading market, full stop. India is a very forward-leaning market. Yet, as a percentage of GDP, advertising spend here is still lower than in countries like Brazil, the United States, and many others I work in.

India is the only market I know where TV advertising is still increasing in total dollars. So, there is a good chance that the advertising industry here will expand doubly fast, since it is a growing economy.

Much of the world is still catching up to being mobile-first. Even in the US, many big brand advertisers still plan TV first, though that’s starting to shift. India, by nature, isn’t just internet-first, it’s mobile-first in its planning.

India, alongside Brazil, is also possibly the most advanced market on business messaging. It’s our leading business messaging market by volume. A chunk of that is AI. India has AI chatbots that are being exported internationally, where people are buying from Indian agencies because they have the know-how.

I wonder if India could export the technology it is developing for AI agencies and AI chatbots, and become a leading service economy globally.

Read: Meta's Sandhya Devanathan on why India is a key market for WhatsApp Business, AI initiatives

How will AI reshape marketing? It is already making video and image creation easier and changing how ads are made.

The first thing AI has changed, and will continue to change, is media buying. About 5-10 years ago, I never thought I would give up control of my media buying to automated ad campaigns. Today, the majority of my budget is spent through fully automated ad campaigns, mostly controlled by Meta and Google in my case. The thing I have to work on with my teams now is the creativity around data labeling, campaign structure, and optimisations.

AI will also take away a ton of the tedious time-consuming work that we do today, like producing 47 different banner ad variations.

Third, it will make things possible that weren’t feasible before due to cost and make then ROI (Return-on-investment) positive. For instance, we now offer chat support in the United States for when you've lost access to your Facebook account and Instagram account, and I hope we roll it out globally. We do that via an AI chatbot, with human support as a fallback. We’ve always wanted to provide this service, but it used to be prohibitively expensive and difficult. AI chatbots are enabling it now.

Lastly, entirely new things will be created that we couldn't have thought of before. The obvious example to me is the unconnected content. Six years ago, everything you saw on Instagram or Facebook came from people you followed, liked, or friended, or something you joined or liked. Today, most of the time spent is on content from sources you’ve never connected with, made possible by modern AI.

What won’t change, however, is that creativity remains the key differentiator for human beings. Even as we see ways to make AI more intelligent, to my knowledge, no one seems to have a clear path to true creativity and the way human beings can come up with creative, spontaneous associations to change things.

Now that you’re starting to monetise WhatsApp through ads, how does that fit into the broader marketing paradigm, and how does it change your approach?

I don’t think it does, because if you look at WhatsApp, the place that's being monetized is the updates tab, not your inbox. The updates tab is basically just Stories.

So what it's offering is a new location for you to run the same ads, and offers more volume.

WhatsApp is actually the single largest place people create content on Earth, in terms of publishing to large numbers. Everyone thinks of it as just private messaging, but the updates tab globally is bigger than Instagram and Facebook for content creation.

Read: WhatsApp Business messaging is a way of life in India, unlike other markets: Meta VP Nikila Srinivasan

How are you using AI tools internally?

In marketing, the number one way is ad buying through automated ad campaigns. To get people to install Instagram, WhatsApp, or Facebook, or to get people to buy glasses through e-commerce, we use the Advantage+ shopping campaigns on Facebook and Instagram

In general, the two things that have been striking to me. Firstly, in engineering and data engineering, and seeing how AI can take someone who’s already a really good engineer and make them sort of a 10x better engineer.

If they can describe the logic for a task, AI just moves things very quickly along, like a massive code migration for millions of servers, and they get it done. It really speeds up some engineers.

How will marketing change as we move to AI glasses or AR/VR devices?

In many ways, the principles will stay constant even though channels change. This is one of the big things I say in my book as well. If you're creating social content, you still need to be entertaining, interesting, and creative.

What these devices do is offer a first-party viewpoint to everyone in a way that you couldn't do before. You can see how this technology is transforming content creation.

It’s also changing social media marketing because devices like this give people a first-party perspective. We’ve been using it for multiple ad campaigns for the glasses. For one campaign with Mark (Zuckerberg), we actually set him on fire, and it became very successful.

Read: Meta launches smart glasses with built-in display, reaching for 'superintelligence'

We often hear Mark Zuckerberg talking about various aspects of AI technology. How is he to work with on marketing?

Mark's a very hands-on CEO. Founder CEOs are different. He created the brands from scratch, so he has a very deep sense of what Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are and what he wants them to be.

He is the greatest learner I think I've ever experienced. He listens quietly and wants to learn and understand from intelligent people about a subject. That makes his feedback very effective. For instance, when we rebranded to Meta I brought some of the best agencies to the table. Mark would quiz them and ask what had gone on in other companies and what he should know.

I’ve worked with many CEOs, CMOs, and executives across the industry. He is unique in his willingness to be silent, not just tell what he thinks, but take the time to understand. Once he understands, his input is brilliant.

Can you tell us about your book and what lessons India can take from it? How can India benefit from the insights in your book?

I think the exciting thing is that advertising in India is growing as a percentage of the economy. With a rising middle class and more disposable income, people can move beyond day-to-day living and start focusing on growth.

This creates opportunities for small businesses and enterprises to invest more in marketing. The book is meant to guide readers through modern digital marketing channels - search, social, partnership ads, and product-led growth. It covers the basics, the infrastructure behind these channels, and what the future holds with AI.

The one constant in marketing is change. All of these channels have emerged since Ogilvy on Advertising came out, and there isn’t a book or manual for them. (Ogilvy on Advertising, published in 1983 by David Ogilvy, is considered a foundational book on business management and marketing).

My belief is that for businesses moving from a hand-to-mouth operation to thinking about growth, as the Indian economy grows and advertising becomes a bigger part of it, this book provides a really good zero-to-one guide on all the digital marketing channels.