Salesforce has revealed the tenth edition of its State of Marketing Report, revealing insights into the UAE’s marketing community.
4,450 global marketers participated in the research, including one hundred from the UAE, allowing the report to reveal contrasts between marketing in the UAE and its global counterparts.
Marketers in the UAE have moved rapidly to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and with greater confidence than international markets, the report reveals. However, findings show that marketing in the UAE faces significant data integration challenges that limit personalisation effectiveness.
A significant group of UAE marketers (86%) say AI is raising customer expectations, matching the global average, and many say they trust AI to respond to customer inquiries (85%). However, almost half of those surveyed (41%) have not figured out how to adapt their strategies to AI, compared to 48 per cent globally – who show a faster adaption to new technologies.
The top AI use cases in the UAE marketing include personalising content, generating copy, and predicting campaign performance or ROI. However, significant barriers to personalisation remain, including lack of overall strategy, siloed data across channels, and difficulty scaling quality control.
“The UAE has always been at the forefront of embracing transformative technologies, and our marketing community’s confidence in AI reflects this forward-thinking mindset,” said Mohammed Alkhotani, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce Middle East and Africa.
“However, the research clearly shows that technology adoption alone is not enough,” he said.
Despite their AI enthusiasm, UAE marketers face a critical challenge that is even more pronounced than the global average: accessing the customer context needed for meaningful engagement. This gap between AI ambition and data reality represents the central challenge for UAE marketing organisations and many customers (78%) demand two-way conversations on every channel.
“Data is the foundation upon which all AI success is built,” said Alkhotani. “The marketers who will win in this new era are those who can unify their data to deliver the personalised, conversational experiences that customers increasingly demand.”
The research further underscores how AI is fundamentally changing the marketing landscape. Half of all Google searches now feature AI summaries that displace traditional results, the report reveals. During the recent holiday season, AI and AI agents drove $262 billion in global sales, representing 20 per cent of global orders and signaling a significant shift in how people discover and shop in the UAE.
Overall, the report suggests that while the UAE market is quick to adopt new technologies, it’s foundational data infrastructure may need additional investment to fully realise AI’s potential.
