Not every brand or company needs to build AI to leverage it: Google's Sapna Chadha on finding balance in SEA's creator economy

With over a decade of experience steering Google's marketing strategy across Asia, Sapna Chadha knows a thing or two about watching technology transform business landscapes. Having risen through the ranks to become vice president for Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier at Google Asia Pacific in March 2023, she's had a front-row seat to both successful innovations and costly technological misadventures. Overseeing Google's operations across 12 geographies has given Chadha unique insights into how different markets adopt—and sometimes over-adopt—new technologies. Her philosophy, "Find the user. Find the magic. Connect the two," reflects her belief that basics matter, even in a landscape where AI increasingly dominates conversations.

The creator economy represents one of the most vibrant areas of focus in her portfolio—a space evolving at warp speed across Southeast Asia. From YouTube's algorithm changes to the explosion of short-form content and the integration of commerce functions, creator platforms have undergone more transformation in the past 18 months than in the previous five years combined. Having previously led marketing for Google India and Southeast Asia, Chadha has tracked these shifts with particular attention to how AI tools are reshaping content creation, distribution, and measurement.

She sat down with Campaign Asia to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping this dynamic sector, why micro-influencers might deliver better ROI than celebrities, and how brands can navigate the delicate balance between technological efficiency and human creativity in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.

Campaign: There's a lot of hype around it and it's the zeitgeist, but how evolved is AI actually within the creator ecosystem, and what level of maturity are we seeing in Southeast Asia compared to other regions?

Sapna Chadha: The evolution of this space has been extreme. I think we're very evolved, but it depends on who you ask—you would find very different answers based on vantage points. I see full video being created by some brands we're working with that haven't touched any historical process in how it was created. There's was a Porsche ad spec recently created completely by AI that tells a complete storyline from end-to-end through video generation. Large e-commerce players are using generative AI for complex campaign execution, while Google's tools are increasingly AI-driven, enabling optimisation capabilities previously impossible. As to the community, it depends on who you're speaking to in terms of how involved they think it is. Things are changing so fast that it's about who can keep up with this sophistication and the revolutionising approach to marketing that's happened in the last few years.

Southeast Asian creators have always been highly social-first. How are they adopting AI compared to creators in other markets?

Yes, this region has always been very social-first. We see it in the amount of video commerce happening and us being ahead of the curve. Southeast Asia has always been incredibly creative, and you see that coming from the creator ecosystem. The authenticity they've demonstrated has built a lot of trust, making influencer marketing critical here. AI has become a valuable tool for both brands and creators in the region. Many creators we work with are using it for generating initial drafts, translations between markets, and personalisation at scale. But creators are doing what they do best—crafting compelling narratives, engaging with communities, and building genuine relationships—while using AI as an augmentation tool. I met with a customer in Vietnam a few weeks ago, and I was shocked with how they're doing a lot on their own that typically would have been done by third parties. They would have had to increase their team size to do many of these things, and now they're able to do things at scale and connect the dots using AI to empower their creative process.

Traditional marketing metrics seem increasingly antiquated in the age of AI. How are you recalibrating measurement frameworks to quantify the true value and impact of AI-driven content?

Ultimately, the strategy remains the same in the world of AI: You're linking investments to business outcomes. The metrics are evolving but not changing fully. What's changing is the operational approach—how things are done in terms of speed, efficiency, and optimisation. AI is allowing us to do deeper levels of metrics and measurement that track content personalisation beyond likes and shares. Traditionally, ads would look at metrics like likes and shares on social. We know that's not good enough. So, marketers have used measurement approaches like marketing mix models, but these would take months to implement and weren't great at measuring the full benefit of performance media. What we're able to do now with AI and open-source models is address that gap—more granular, more accurate insights with correlation to sales, done faster. Marketers can now do analysis that might have happened once or twice a year, much more rigorously and rapidly.

There's AI as an enabler in measurement and AI as an output in the form of generative content. Where should brands focus their investment?

Each brand and company doesn't need to build their own AI to leverage it. Many AI-powered solutions are already available [from Google and competitors] within their existing offerings. You can start using AI tomorrow within your campaigns. A campaign's creative or visible element is just a small part. The bulk is media and effectiveness, which is where investment should be concentrated because that drives ultimate effectiveness over time. The greatest marketers and teams are finding the right balance between letting AI do its work where it's most effective while maintaining control over their own customer understanding, nuances, tactics and measurement approaches. If you were spending 20% on creative and 80% on media, that shouldn't change in this new world. But maybe you can do even more creative things with your creative budgets by leveraging these new capabilities.

Given increasingly limited budgets how are brands navigating the delicate balance between AI technologies, human creativity, and influencer partnerships so that there's both genuine connection and commercial efficiency?

The authenticity of human creators inherently builds trust, and that's paramount in influencer marketing. I don't think this authenticity can be replicated by AI, and brands I work with believe and understand that. The genuineness, authenticity, and unique perspective that human creators offer is not going to disappear. Now the game is about how many micro-influencers you can work with. Achieving scale through many micro-influencers usually leads to the best outcome from what I've seen. For example, I'm working with a client whose sales are mostly in the US, and they want to work in certain particular states. They're working with micro-influencers known within those states rather than sports celebrities. They're finding it works really well because that authenticity—finding people who others know, like moms as influencers—creates trust. The beauty of AI is that you can have a campaign working with 150 influencers, which would have been impossible three or four years ago.

AI is also becoming the invisible architecture of many community platforms, how critical is authentic human connection in determining which digital tribes thrive and which falter?

Community building is everything—that's the value being created. Creators are augmenting their creative process. I don't think they're using AI to create things without any human element, but they're enhancing the work they're doing. When you're introducing technology into the mix, like partially AI-generated content alongside authentically created content, that sense of community is what really holds the brand value. This comes back to the creators who have built their communities. They're not using AI to completely replace the human element—it's about augmentation, not substitution.

The regulatory landscape for AI-generated content remains fragmented across APAC. How are you navigating intellectual property, copyright and ethical issues around it?

For creators drowning in the cacophony of AI tools and techniques, what separates those who harness this technology meaningfully from those merely riding the hype train?

First, understand prompting. The more data, the more specific parameters, understanding how models work—that's when the outcomes are best. There's a big difference in output quality, so invest time in guidance and prompting. When I talked about that Porsche ad, the reason why it works so well is because that director is like a prompting genius. He knows how to use the capabilities. Second, real-time optimisation is now required. Gone are the days of sending an asset and being done. Are you partnering for optimisation? Even at scale, the relationship between brand and creator can't be non-existent. You need to understand the brand and create the ability to continually evolve. People underestimate this—they think they wake up in the morning, create three assets and they're done. It's not so easy.

On the other side, CMOs today face unprecedented pressure to demonstrate AI's ROI while simultaneously transforming legacy operations. What are the existential challenges they're encountering at this intersection?

Evolving our teams to be agile in this new world. Digital-first players do this extremely well—they're built for agility. Traditional brands can get stuck in old models of long-term campaigns that are too slow. AI is compressing timelines. How are you investing in creating that agility and finding talent that can adapt? Many CMOs ask how to get started. I tell them they're already doing a lot if they're using capabilities with AI built in. Take advantage of what you're using today and tell the story of how AI is helping you. The way to unlock more budgets is to show you're actually using existing capabilities effectively. It's about taking what exists and showing the impact you're driving with AI, then selling that to secure more budget for further innovation.

Finally, are there any standout examples of brands you've seen successfully leveraging AI with creators in Southeast Asia?

We've seen some impressive results. Tresemme Philippines partnered with creators to develop various creative assets as ads boosted across channels. The creators developed full review videos, Shorts, and 30-second cutdowns, resulting in 24% ad recall lift and 68.7% of viewers expressing purchase intent [in accordance with Google case study figures]. GrowPLUS+, a leader in the Vietnam dairy market, identified four influential family content creators alongside 17 Shorts creators to foster awareness and consideration. Content ranged from product reviews to daily product integration. This synergy between digital and real-world activations helped achieve twice the purchases with "best-in-class" consideration lift and 5.8 million user interactions [in accordance with Google case study figures].

Perhaps most impressive was Tiket.com in Indonesia. During a rebranding campaign, they partnered with four diverse YouTube creators, providing each with unique promo codes for their followers. The campaign was amplified using "YouTube Partnership Ads" targeting YouTube Shorts viewers and the influencers' followers. This AI-powered approach reached 9.1 million unique users in just 11 days, with 22% being Gen Z and 41% millennials. The campaign achieved a 13% engagement rate (versus the 6% social media average) and delivered 62% higher conversion rates versus other branded campaigns [in accordance with Google case study figures].

We have to remember: AI is just a tool—an incredible one that's revolutionising processes—but the human connection remains irreplaceable. The most successful creators will be those who use technology to amplify their authentic voice, not replace it.