Gulf businesses are overwhelmingly choosing Arabic over English for their advertising, even when their brand names are written in English, according to new data from AI marketing platform Adly.
An analysis of advertisements created on the platform between February and October 2026 found that 92% of ads produced by Gulf businesses with English-letter brand names were in Arabic.
The findings highlight the importance of local language and cultural preferences in the region’s advertising market, challenging the assumption that English brand names necessarily translate into English-language marketing.
The data showed that 43% of Gulf businesses on Adly’s platform had brand names written in English letters. In the UAE, the preference for Arabic was even more pronounced, with 94% of advertisements created in the language.
The study also found a preference for premium positioning among Gulf advertisers. One in five businesses used luxury-related words such as “luxurious” and “refined” in their advertisements, compared with approximately one in seven businesses in the Levant.
Overall, 17% of Gulf brands opted for a luxury-oriented brand voice, against just 5% in North Africa.
Another notable finding was the limited use of free delivery as an advertising hook. Fewer than one in 200 Gulf businesses mentioned free delivery in their advertisements, suggesting that regional marketers may favour other approaches to attracting customers.
The analysis also found that around nine in 10 Gulf businesses that used numbers in their advertisements preferred Western digits, such as 123, rather than Arabic-Indic numerals.
Adly founder Hani Hourani said many businesses in the Gulf choose English names for their storefronts but communicate with customers in Arabic.
He said the region had its own marketing language, tone and advertising hooks, adding that advice developed for other markets did not always reflect local consumer preferences.
The study covered businesses across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Levant and North Africa. It excluded automated content, test accounts and internal accounts. Each advertising tactic was counted once per business to avoid giving greater weight to businesses that advertised more frequently.
However, Adly noted that the findings were based on businesses using its platform and did not represent a random sample of the region’s advertising market. Word matching was also approximate.
