How real is the AI disruption for the advertising and media planning sectors?

It is significant. I mean, the stock market is clearly signalling that holding companies are in trouble as a result of AI. We’ll see whether that turns out to be true. But from the perspective of visualisation and copywriting, it is significantly compressing the time taken to make an ad and the cost of an ad, which means agencies will have to shift from a revenue model and the hours model to an output model with personalisation at scale, what I call “Netflix on steroids”. It is a huge opportunity from the perspective of media planning and buying. Meta has Advantage+, Google has Performance Max (PMax — AI-driven automated advertising offerings).

Uniting Advantage+ and PMax with Sora and Veo 3, you get an end-to-end production model, including creative, production, media planning and buying. So the agency has to get closer to the platforms and clients. They will need to realise that the majority of things are going to be decided by algorithmic analysis and not manual. So, in that space, there will not be a need for as many people as before.

We currently have three models followed by companies — outsourced, embedded and in-house. The advice we give clients is that agility is key. You should take back control. You should do more internally — for example, media planning, not everywhere, but in many cases, because there’s nobody who knows more about your business than you.

The other aspect is first-party data. Consolidating data at scale is critically important. And, finally, what I call democratisation and flattening of organisations and getting people to work together more efficiently.

What is your advice for a young person entering the advertising and media buying industry?

Learn Chinese, Spanish and code, and then focus on the digital and data part of the business, because that is where the opportunity is, with the traditional part of the business going down.

If I was coming out of university, I think I would go to America or the Middle East or Asia.

You have said that the traditional co-relations seen as markers of economic health have broken down. What are the new markers?

I think the traditional correlation between corporate profitability and ad spend seems to have broken down. Firstly, the $300 billion traditional media ad spend is going south, while digital spend at $900 billion is going north. Companies like Google and Meta are investing astronomical figures. They spend more on capex than opex. So that’s where the difference is. Ad spend strategies have also become more short-term.

Listed companies need to report revenues on a quarterly basis, and I do agree with Trump that we should get rid of quarterly reporting. Private equity firms, their whole period is five years, and they control a big part of the economy. And then venture capital, they’re asking, “Where’s my exit?”

So, by their nature, people are focusing more on the short term. And the question arises: Why am I spending all this money on this upper-funnel stuff? You know, Olympics and World Cup, when I have to appear in front of investors to justify spending? It’s also the geographical volatility, the fragmentation and the technological volatility that drives people to a shorter-term focus on spending. So at mid-funnel and lower-funnel, activation and performance becomes even more important.

What is the future strategy of S4 Capital, especially in India?

We’re digital-only, data-driven. We go to market faster, better, cheaper and so the model is right. Nearly 50 per cent of our revenues comes from tech, so we’re under the gun because they’re spending so much on capex.

So we have to get our act together on growth and margins. But we have improved quite significantly and our balance sheet is getting in better shape. We have a good set of clients. We have done a lot of M&A and we need to integrate those even better because we’ve only done surface work. We have a small business here in India, with about 250 people, and we are looking at scaling it up.

How will AI impact creativity?

I was speaking to somebody who’s regarded as a creative genius and his point was there’s so much work out there that’s not good and is crappy. In his view, AI will raise the level. The genius stuff still will be done, but he thinks the general level of work will be raised. It’s a tool that people can use to improve the general level of work.

The real problem is what happens when machines become more powerful than people? I mean, it is a worry. I mean, we’ve gone past the Oppenheimer moment, which is when we can control this stuff. I mean, now these platforms and companies are nation states.

What is your view on the current volatility in the world? Where does India stand in the global scheme of things? What impact do you see from the recently inked India-EU FTA and the US-India interim trade framework ?

We’ve got three big geopolitical challenges — one around the US and China relations, or lack of them; one around Putin and what his ambitions are, even beyond Ukraine; and, thirdly, around Iran. So that creates a world which is much more fragmented and geographically nuanced. So in that world, I think clients are choosing their geographies much more carefully. You know the ‘Ted Levitt globalisation’ — consumers consuming everything, everywhere — is not gone, but it’s much more different.

So in that environment, you pick your markets much more carefully. Also, the global economic growth will be slower than before, at a little less than 3 per cent. That means efficiency and technology become more and more important with the implementation of AI at scale. Unfortunately, we see more consumer adoption of AI than company or client adoption. We do see cloud adoption in automobiles and financial services because of competition. But AI is not about technology. It’s about workflow simplification and change management; and people don’t change until there’s economic pressure to do so. I hope that in 2026 we will see significant adoption of AI at scale, but I somewhat doubt it will happen because companies are doing very well. Despite all the fear about tariffs, companies are doing very well and Trump is stimulating the economy. At the same time, I am a little worried that in the second half of the year, we’ll see inflation in America; but we’ve seen very significant productivity gains and that’s before AI starts to kick in. So maybe my fears about inflation in the second half are overblown, but generally there are two things that come out of all this — you have to pick your markets much more carefully than before; and you have to apply technology to improve efficiency.

From the growth point of view, India remains the fastest-growing economy and it is in a very good spot. I think the recent trade deals will be highly stimulative.