It didn’t look like a failure at first. On paper, everything was working.
A few months ago, I had coffee with a marketing director who’d just been let go from a homegrown UAE retail brand. Two years on the job, every return on ad spend (ROAS) target hit, and the spreadsheets were full of green numbers. So why was he being walked out? But the moment the paid budget stopped, the brand disappeared. No one searched for it, and no one asked for it by name because there was no reason to.
That conversation has been rattling around my head ever since, because honestly? It’s the cleanest summary I can give of where UAE marketing trends are heading in 2026. The difference between buying attention and actually earning it is starting to show, and the brands that confused the two are about to have a very expensive year.
The ROAS Obsession: And Why It Made Sense (For a While)
Performance marketing didn’t take over Dubai by accident. We’re working in one of the fastest-growing, most online markets on the planet, with founders under pressure to prove every dirham spent was worth it. ROAS gave us a clean, measurable answer. Spend, track, optimise, repeat.
For a long time, that was enough. I’ve sat in enough marketing meetings to know that ROAS became the answer to everything, even when it shouldn’t have been. New product launch? Run paid. Repositioning? Run paid harder. Customer churning? Buy them back at scale. Right?
Here’s the thing, though. The problem is that ROAS is incomplete. It only tells you how efficiently you turned attention into a transaction last week, and nothing about whether anyone will still think of you next year.
The Shift I’m Starting to Notice
The shift unfolding across the region this year is subtle, but it’s real. The smartest brands and a few of the smartest agencies are quietly rebalancing. They’re not abandoning performance, just refusing to pretend it can carry the whole thing on its own.
The questions founders are asking have changed. A year ago, it was all about scaling paid. Now it’s about whether people would search for the brand by name. That’s not a small change. That’s the entire game.
- Creative is starting to matter again, not just as something to test, but as something people might actually remember. Brands are remembering they need a personality again, a way of talking, a look, a point of view you can describe in a sentence. Because the brands that came out of two cost-of-living squeezes alive were the ones people chose without being asked.
- And the way people discover brands has shifted, too. People aren’t clicking ads the way they used to. They’re typing brand names into TikTok and asking ChatGPT for recommendations. If your name isn’t in their head, you’re not even in the conversation, no matter how clever your bidding strategy is.
Performance gets you in the room. The brand decides if anyone wants you to stay.
And the brands that get this? They’re not panicking. They’re rebuilding how they think about marketing so brand and performance actually talk to each other, instead of fighting over the budget meeting.
The Part People Still Undervalue
I still find it strange when brand equity gets dismissed as the fluffy bit of marketing, because it’s the opposite. Brand equity is the hardest thing to build on the balance sheet, and the most punishing thing to lose.
Think about what it actually buys you:
When it’s working, you feel it everywhere. People come looking for you instead of needing to be pushed. Pricing becomes easier to hold. And when something shifts, whether it’s the algorithm or the market, you don’t disappear overnight.
Brand equity is what makes a customer choose you when the ad stops running. And in the UAE in 2026, where media costs keep climbing, and attention keeps fragmenting, that’s the moat.
This is why I’ve been watching how some regional agencies are repositioning. TIDAL Digital, for example, has been openly describing itself as a brand-led performance marketing agency, and let me tell you they’ve actually put brand thinking before media planning, rather than bolting it on at the end. That’s the rebalancing I’m describing, finally showing up in the work.
The other piece worth flagging is how much of the brand-equity conversation now lives in Search and Discovery. When someone types your category into Google, asks Perplexity for the best option, or scrolls TikTok looking for a recommendation, the brands that come up are the ones who’ve done the unglamorous work of being known. That’s brand equity doing its job, quietly stacking up while everyone else is busy buying clicks.
What This Actually Means
Here’s my honest take, after watching this play out across more pitches and clients than I care to count.
The brands that seem to be holding up aren’t treating brand and performance as competing ideas: They’re not enemies; they’re two different jobs that need to happen at the same time. If you’re spending 95% on paid acquisition and 5% on brand, you’re renting your audience, and the rent keeps going up.
They’re also clearer about what they stand for: Not a deck full of values nobody will read. A point of view sharp enough that a customer could repeat it back to you in one sentence. If they can’t describe you in a single line, no amount of ROAS optimisation is going to save you.
Measure the things that matter over a longer window: Branded search volume, direct traffic, and unprompted brand recall. Those are the numbers that tell you whether you’re building something or just pouring petrol on a fire.
And there’s a quiet honesty about what they’re building. If you’re running a quick-flip e-commerce play and plan to be out in eighteen months, fine, milk the ROAS dashboard and have a nice life. But if you actually want to build something that lasts, you have to invest in being remembered.
Over To You
Have you been watching the same shift from your corner of the UAE marketing world? I’m curious what this looks like from your side with the brief you’ve had to defend most ROAS-obsessed lately, and tell me whether your business would survive a month with the paid budget switched off.
I don’t think this shift is loud yet. But it’s there.
Spotted a UAE brand getting this balance right or spectacularly wrong? Send it through the contact page. I’m always collecting case studies for the next piece. And if you’d like Belle Barri to review your brand, just get in touch.
