How will features like Google's AI Mode impact how people market?

AI search features are transforming traditional marketing approaches. Alex Schultz, CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta, explains how AI-powered search and chat experiences will reshape digital advertising strategies. He discusses AI engine optimization as the new SEO, the competitive landscape between Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Meta's positioning through AI glasses and voice interfaces that integrate real-world context with search capabilities. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.

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  Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

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  Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.

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  If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  I'm Benjamin Shapiro and joining me today is Alex Schultz, who is the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. Alex oversees global marketing, analytics and internationalization for the company's 3.4 billion daily users and was named one of Forbes' most influential CMOs in the world. And today, he's going to talk to us about his new book, The Art and Science of Digital Advertising, which is a deep dive into how creativity and analytics work together to drive growth in an AI-first world. All right, let's move on and I want to go into our lightning round where I ask you a couple of questions about Meta and your book and the world of marketing. Are you ready?

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  Yes.

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  All right, AI is shifting the marketing landscape. How do you think features like Google's AI mode are going to impact how people market?

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  I think a lot of principles are going to remain the same about incrementality, measurement and so on, but I think it's going to absolutely transform how we market.

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  You mentioned before that there is a correlation between how much people use chatbots like GPT and their search. Do you have a sense that traditional search is going away in favor of chat experiences and will search marketing be affected? I guess really what I'm asking, are we all just going to be like paying chat GPT for tokens to be able to use the chatbot instead of monetizing the access to information through the advertising model?

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  I mean, this is a question I don't know the answer to. The game is on. So Google is doing an amazing job with Gemini. And when people are interacting with Gemini, they seem to be actually increasing their search volume, increasing their engagement. Now, they're keeping people on the site. The future's here. It's not evenly distributed yet. And if you look at what's happened to Stack Overflow, they have been completely disrupted by chat and GPT and Gemini and all of these things. So there's going to be a massive shift in how organic search happens and what you're even optimizing for. Is it AI engine optimization? But there's one world where, no, Google makes the transition. They win. It remains ad-supported. Gemini is the victor and you are still typing things into a box on Google and maybe it

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  kicks off a chat, but maybe it instantly gives you an answer or even behaves agitatively and buys what you want. So there's one world where Google wins. There's another world, and clearly this is one of the things that OpenAI is trying for, where OpenAI goes off and wins. And they transfer people's search from Google into OpenAI and they get to this place where people are searching through chatting back and forth with the chatbot and it's paid. And in that world, we still need to think about AI engine optimization. It becomes like SEO for the future. And there's a lot of similarities there in terms of how it crawls, how it ranks, where it gets data, whatever. But no ads. So that will totally change the industry. What I suspect is going to happen is a blend of the two. Both are going to exist and probably the overall search-esque market is going to grow. But who's the winner

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  and who's the loser? Does Google end up way ahead? They're awesome. They're impressive. They're the 800-pound gorilla. Or do they end up splitting it with even people like us through Matter AI? Who knows? I think it's going to be really exciting to watch.

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  I was just gonna ask you, in your description of the changing search landscape and marketing and advertising, sure, there's the very easy comparison of what'll happen with Google and OpenAI. But you did not actually say, where does Meta fit into this? So in that sort of juxtaposition of there's the search model, and then there's these LLMs that people are going directly, where does Meta live in that universe?

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  Well, first and foremost, we think it's gonna go with you everywhere. So we have AI glasses. These are the most advanced wearable there is in the world right now. This is actually an engineering sample that I have right here, which probably isn't showing on the camera.

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  They look cool.

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  These are really awesome. And when you ask them a question, they answer it. And they can also use what you're looking at at the same time to take your worldview and make it better. And they're gonna get better and better and better as our AI advances. And our AI will advance. Had a great year in last year. So far, it's not been so good this year, but we've got some amazing people on board, who I think are gonna accelerate it. So for talk, for voice interface, we think we're in a really good position right now. Now, Google's done a deal with Warby Parker. They wanna get in there. Then, from a chat interface, over a billion people are chatting away with Meta AI at this point. So we're definitely in the race there as well. My hope is we're in the game. The main thing we've used it for, though, is ads ranking, content ranking, engagement, because the whole TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels,

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  Facebook Reels could not have happened without modern AI. Five years ago, we were all about followed content. Today, we are majority about unfollowed content that is ranked through these modern AI systems. So there's a number of different angles that are coming in here. And of course, the last one is AI-generated content, which you must be seeing on TikTok and Instagram, because it's happening. What happens to social media in an AI-generated content world? We don't know, but we're looking at it very closely, too. So I think there's multiple different angles on which this gets interesting and disrupted. And we're in the game, and that makes it fun for me.

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  Yep, and we are definitely still in the first inning of the game. That wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Alex Schultz, the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. If you'd like to contact Alex, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com. And of course, you could visit his company's website, which is meta.com. And his book launches in early October, so go ahead and get a copy. We'll have a link in our show notes for that as well. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube, and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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  Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iHearEverything.com.