In this article
Key takeaways
- There is no "Dubai ad library": ads are counted by country. In the study window 41,020 Arabic ads from 6,964 advertiser pages ran in the UAE.
- The UAE is a video market: 71% of ads are video and 16% single images. "Shop now" (39%) and "WhatsApp message" (31%) share the market.
- A discount in 40% of ads and urgency in 20%; cash on delivery in 15% and instalments in 4%.
- The advertised price in dirhams: a median of AED 299, with half the prices between AED 130 and 600.
The library counts by country, not by city
When you open Meta's Ad Library and choose "United Arab Emirates", you see every ad shown in the country: the store ad targeting Dubai alone, the store ad targeting all seven emirates, and the Gulf seller's ad targeting the UAE together with Qatar and Kuwait. There is no city filter. Targeting a city, or a radius around a point, is a setting in the advertiser's own Ads Manager, and the library does not reveal it.
So we state the numbers plainly for what they are: UAE numbers. 41,020 Arabic ads from 6,964 advertiser pages ran in the UAE in the study window, making the UAE the second-largest market for Arabic ads in our library after Saudi Arabia. Of these ads, 10% also ran in Qatar, 8% in Kuwait, 8% in Bahrain and 7% in Saudi Arabia: the seller targeting Dubai often targets Doha and Kuwait in the same campaign.
A second caveat: our library collects Arabic ads only, and in Dubai especially a large share of ads is in English and other languages (real estate, services, restaurants). What you read here is what speaks to the Arabic-speaking buyer in the UAE. The wider picture is in Facebook ads in the UAE.
Formats and buttons
Video is 71% of Arabic ads shown in the UAE, single images 16% and carousels 4%. The UAE has one of the highest video shares in the Gulf alongside Kuwait, and its buyers see Reels before anything else.
Buttons say where the buyer goes: "Shop now" on 39% of ads, "WhatsApp message" on 31%, "Order now" on 12%, "Send message" on 3% and "Book now" on 1%. The real destination: 33% of ads end in a WhatsApp chat with no store, 14% lead to a Shopify store, and the rest is spread over WooCommerce, Salla, EasyOrders, LightFunnels and YouCan in small shares. How to sell from WhatsApp in the UAE: WhatsApp ads.
What UAE ads offer
- Discount first: a discount or an offer in 40% of ads, and "limited time" and the like in 20%. The UAE advertiser sells with the offer and urgency.
- Cash on delivery in 15%: present, but not the rule; many stores leave it to the landing page.
- Free delivery in 12% and a gift in 9%.
- Instalments in only 4%: Tabby and Tamara appear rarely in the ad itself, although stores offer them at checkout.
- WhatsApp in the copy in 11%: even when the button goes to the store, the advertiser puts a WhatsApp number in the text.
What sells through ads in the UAE
Hair care (12%) and fashion and shoes (12%) lead, then watches and accessories (10%), health and supplements (10%), electronics (9%), skincare (9%), perfumes (8%) and home and furniture (8%). An ad can fall in more than one category. For fashion ads in the UAE read UAE fashion ads, and for the products that last, Trending in the UAE.
Prices in dirhams and copy length
Of 5,251 ads that stated a price in dirhams: the lower quartile up to AED 130, the median 299, the upper quartile from AED 600. The "buy from the ad" range in the UAE is higher in value than in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and anything above a few hundred dirhams needs a known brand or instalments.
Copy: half of UAE ads are longer than 67 words, longer than Saudi ads (44 words). The UAE advertiser explains more: benefits, delivery to all emirates, how to order, a WhatsApp number. Write at that length only if every line carries an offer or a new fact.
How to study Dubai and Abu Dhabi ads in GccFY
- Country "UAE" and an Arabic word from your product, then sort by longest running: an ad running for weeks in the UAE is paid for by a merchant who sees results. Why: Ad running time.
- Search the city name in the copy: «دبي» (Dubai), «أبوظبي» (Abu Dhabi), «الشارقة» (Sharjah), «العين» (Al Ain). Many advertisers write "delivery inside Dubai within hours" or "our branch in Abu Dhabi" in the text itself, and that is the closest you get to city numbers.
- Open the captured store page behind the ad: the price in dirhams, delivery to all emirates or Dubai only, the payment method, the pixels.
- The "store type" filter to see Shopify or WhatsApp sellers alone, or the WhatsApp filter for chat ads.
- The Advertisers screen filtered to the UAE and sorted by most ads: who is testing a lot right now, and who holds long-lived ads.
When you write your own ad for Dubai or Abu Dhabi: name the city and delivery there in the first two lines, state the price in dirhams, and test the store button and the WhatsApp button together, since they are close in the market. The comparison with Saudi Arabia is in Riyadh and Jeddah ads, and plan weeks ahead of the seasons: UAE National Day on 2 December, Ramadan and White Friday.
