Mumbai: India's digital landscape is evolving, and at its heart lies a burgeoning AI revolution. With over 724 million users already engaging with AI features, the country is on the brink of a transformative shift. Kantar, a global leader in marketing data and analytics, delves into this dynamic AI market, offering actionable insights for brands. From the widespread adoption of AI in fitness and social media apps to the emergence of virtual assistants and smart home automation, the AI wave is reshaping consumer experiences.

But it's not just about adopting AI; it's about humanizing it. Kantar's innovative suite of AI-powered research solutions empowers brands to understand consumer behavior like never before, paving the way for sustainable growth and competitive advantage in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Indiantelevision.com in conversation with Kantar MD and chief client officer- South Asia, insights division Soumya Mohanty and Kantar senior executive director, South Asia, insights division Puneet Avasthi delved into Kantar’s AI Summit that was held on 24 April 2024; the ways in which Indian consumers are incorporating AI into their daily lives, on Kantar's AI-based offerings and more…

Edited Excerpts:

On the Kantar AI Summit and its key insights

Puneet: The AI Summit is a platform where we're going to be sharing the details of our full range of investments leveraging AI and our unique models, and datasets for the purpose of addressing client questions in this fast-paced world of AI. We have a very rich understanding of how consumers in India have adopted AI and the different features that really go under the umbrella of AI. This is really what matters from a connect-with-consumer standpoint and that is something that we've understood in depth.

We've looked at, not just understanding the different features of AI in the country, we've also looked at an understanding of what kind of apps are enabling that usage. So that's something that we're going to be talking about in the AI Summit.

On the ways in which Indian consumers are incorporating AI into their daily lives, and the implications that this has for marketers

Puneet: AI in India has started out principally as a feature to make things more efficient for the Indian activator and user. There are people who are living in this very fast-paced digital world and AI really helps make life easier for them a lot more. And that's really why AI has a reason to exist from a consumer standpoint.

In that, it has started out with powering recommendation engines, image enhancement. So some of those features are pretty much reaching saturation levels and are going to be growing at the rate at which the internet grows in India, which is five-six per cent per annum. But really the big growth over the next two-three years is going to be in terms of virtual assistants and that is something that is going to be radically changing the way we see it how brands are also going to be creating unique experiences to reach out to consumers as the virtual assistants are growing very rapidly in terms of their reach.

We are seeing a rapid growth and I think the next four-five years are going to be transformational in terms of the device and durable ecosystem at home with many more smart and connected devices at home that are going to be used by consumers.

Soumya: Also, if you look at it broadly, AI will help marketers analyze data faster than they are able to do today because you can real-time analyze data and real-time take decisions. AI will improve experience of your customers because if you use recommendation engines better, you will improve the kind of experience they get through that method because you know what they are. I mean you look at something very simple, the kind of choices that you are shown when you go to an e-commerce site or when you are watching an OTT, all of that is AI-driven. So as AI becomes better and more powerful, those choices will become, what you expose the consumer to, will also become much more nuanced and much better.

Today it is based on, let's say, only my past history. Tomorrow it's going to be based not just on my past history but maybe, the kind of browsing I do. Maybe I've spent just five minutes and I've stopped watching something. That can be fed into it. Other things that I'm doing can be fed into it. It can make a much richer experience for me. And finally, I think you can just sort of create marketing strategies on the fly.

I can do a lot of that with AI. Of course, all this will be within, by the way, you can also type an answer to what AI will do for marketers using GoViolet or using ChatGPT. So it is generally transformative in that sense. But I think the challenge is that you are going to have walled gardens like Facebook.

You won't be able to follow the consumer through those walls. You really won't. Actually, there will be stricter and stricter privacy laws. There already are, and they will become even more stricter.

So, all this will have to be done keeping in mind that the data access that you have today may also reduce. Then, therefore, it will become important to have an understanding or a framework with which you analyze that data. That's where actually the Kantar tools come in. Because we do so much of consumer research, we actually have an understanding of how consumers behave. We have a lot of data. Now, it's not just random data, which is there on Twitter or on Facebook or whatever. It's the data in a framework.

So that's the advantage when you start working with folks like us to make more sense of the data that you are surrounded by.

On the ethical considerations that marketers should keep in mind when deploying AI-powered marketing strategies

Soumya: The first one would be bias. I think AI is as good, apart from the fact that it's as good as the data it is trained on, which is garbage in, garbage out.

There is also some amount of analyst bias or the person who is actually writing the code bias that comes into any kind of AI. Obviously, after some time, open AI, etc, but it regards itself. But somewhere, some human intervention has led to its learning. So it can go horribly wrong at times.

Just like social listening can go horribly wrong. If you are on Twitter, you will be served with what you are actually seeing, and you will end up believing what you are reading. For instance, during election season, you may end up believing whatever you are shown because it becomes such an echo chamber. Social media is getting weaponized. Marketers have to be really, really careful that it's unbiased, it is neutral, it is objective.

The challenge, again, is that we are in an era where two or three big players actually dominate the Internet in a way. Everything is dominated. It's not as open as we think. That's where I think they'll have to take the data that is getting given to them with a pinch of salt. They will have to ensure the algorithms are not biased. There's a lot of work to be done here.

On Kantar's AI-based offerings and how does it work for marketers

Puneet: So Kantar has traditionally developed a very strong suite from the standpoint of understanding consumers and understanding specific marketing activities, whether it is ROI, whether it is creative. Naturally, when it's about consumers, it is about understanding the needs of the consumers, understanding what trends are defining consumers.

So what we've done is we've taken those frameworks which have been owned over several decades through the different researches that we've done and developed those models into a framework which is now pretty much where we've got the data across a multitude of studies that have been done over years along with our powerful engines which have been fed into the machine learning models as such to create a suitable mechanism of ensuring that the machine is able to process diverse data sets and create appropriate learnings about the consumer as such, whether it is understanding trends, whether it is leveraging the large database of ad pre-tests that we've been doing over years.

In India, for example, we've done over 28,000 ads being pre-tested over the last couple of decades. Using that data, we've created a very nuanced understanding of what kind of ads are going to be working. That is particularly relevant in this new age where ads need to get rolled out very quickly in this digital age and particularly the YouTube age as such.

In these environments, the ability to be able to test out the likely results that a particular ad or a creative is going to deliver in a fairly quick turnaround time is something that is a differentiator in itself. That is something that Link AI does very effectively. Similarly, we've got other tools such as Trend AI, which allows you to understand trends that are bubbling up and defining the consumer today, leveraging a multitude of data sources, unstructured data sources, that are being fed into our machine learning algorithms to create suitable understanding of how consumers are evolving.

These are some of the offerings. We've got Needscope, which allows you to understand consumer needs, needs based on how, what are the spaces that a brand can take within their targeting framework.

Soumya: So if I was to say how useful this is, less than one per cent of ads that are put out are tested. Most advertisers don't test advertising. Now with our AI offer, they can actually test a lot more advertising and the chances of failure of ads reduces.

If there's something horribly off, at least you don't have to risk putting it online and then taking it down because there is a big backlash. At least you can avoid those kind of mistakes by using these AI solutions that we have.

On marketers effectively humanizing AI technologies to create innovative and relatable brand experiences for consumers

Puneet: So to humanize AI, to create those superlative brand experiences and brands are always looking at ways and means of delighting the consumer because in a manner where the message of the brand is consistent and delivered in a way that it anchors itself to what is relevant to the consumer and is truly differentiated versus whatever, you know, are the options that are set in the marketplace.

Brands are looking to create those superlative experiences and what AI and technologies do is, it creates a new mechanism of reaching out to consumers, targeting them effectively in their own spaces. Now AI is something that is increasingly getting embedded in consumers' ways of living.

There is a cohort of consumers and a fairly large chunk of consumers who are looking at a variety of images and playing with their own images, anything on their own and using some of those features of AI which are brilliantly available in a whole host of social media apps. So a lot of these things are already now, defined by consumers. It is actually about the marketer leveraging some of these trends that have already, the technologies and trends, both are actually in place now.

You've got the technology, you've got the trend, consumers have adopted it. It's for marketers to leverage it effectively and create those superlative brand experiences. Some that come to mind are, for example, what Britannia has done recently where they have leveraged the power of trend, the reach of trend as such and created something that is almost, a surreal dreamlike experience. You would imagine a newspaper and what if the images were to be moving and you've got this little QR code there which you scan using a mobile phone and it reaches out to the camera and it creates a big CRT which is quite brilliant. And you've got Ranveer Singh who's suddenly talking about the brand message to the consumer. It's done in a very interesting manner and leverages a tremendous amount of computing capacity and creates a very, a superlative brand experience.

Similarly, Mondelez had done something very effectively where they had created a hyperlocal targeting program where they had helped retailers across various micro-markets to, grow their business or gain their business traction as such post the pandemic and they've done it very effectively through a campaign where they used the face of Shah Rukh Khan who spoke to the consumer in various parts of the country as such in that particular micro-market, advocating a specific retailer. That is something that is fantastic for the retailer and it is also a delight for the consumer who is residing in that particular market. These are some very interesting examples of how AI has been used to humanize this technology and create great brand experiences for consumers.

Soumya: The simplest way in which AI can be humanized is that basically you can segment your audience better and you can target your audience better. The moment you start targeting better, you are creating personalized experiences, personalized recommendations. So automatically you are sort of humanizing it. Apart from these brilliant examples of using technology to make an experience normalized.

On the role that you see AI playing in shaping the future of consumer insights and market research

Soumya: It will make market research more accessible to a lot more people. In India, by the way, market research is probably penetrated less than 10 per cent, even less than that. If you look at how big the Indian economy is, and if you look at how big marketing and advertising spends are, that itself is very low in India. Within that, research and insights is even lower. So, effectively, the coming of AI and, of course, social media and the internet can increase the reach of everything, from marketing and advertising. Marketing and advertising itself will grow, and so will consumer research.

Number one, it will improve accessibility. It will make it faster. It will make it more cost-effective for the kind of clientele that today may not be able to afford large-scale work. Having said that, what is most important is that you finally need a human behind the AI because the data that goes into the AI, and the algorithm that is written, is the most important part. Otherwise, AI can go horribly wrong.

On the threats that AI can pose

Soumya: I think more than threat, it's an opportunity, because we are a neutral, third-party, objective source of information, and we have very validated, strong consumer frameworks.