AI shopping in the UAE: what the 2026 research tells us

What the research measured, and where

Similarweb and Statista published The State of Ecommerce 2026 this month. Similarweb tracked the sites people visited in a single browsing session before they arrived at a retail site with a checkout. In June 2026 an AI tool appeared in 11.4% of those sessions, up from 4.5% in July 2024. Sessions that used both an AI tool and a search engine converted at 23.0%, against 17.3% for search alone and 12.5% for AI alone.

Three limits are worth stating before any of that is quoted at a board. The behavioural data covers United States desktop traffic only, in a report that records 86.5% of Americans aged 16 to 64 shopping mainly on a phone or tablet. Similarweb states its own figures are estimates. And both publishers sell measurement products into the question the report raises, which does not make the numbers wrong, and does mean the framing deserves a second read.

The fourth limit is the one that matters most from Dubai. The research was carried out in a market where AI adoption is roughly half what it is here.

Where the UAE sits on AI use, against the markets the research covers

Microsoft publishes a quarterly measure of generative AI use by country. It counts the share of people aged 15 to 64 who used a generative AI tool in the period, from its own telemetry, adjusted for device share, internet use and population. The June 2026 figures were published on 21 September 2026.

Market	World rank, June 2026	Share of working age adults using AI
United Arab Emirates	1	73.3%
Singapore	2	64.3%
United Kingdom	8	43.7%
United States	21	33.0%
Germany	23	32.3%
Saudi Arabia	25	31.4%
World average		18.8%

The three markets the shopping research covers rank 8th, 21st and 23rd. The UAE ranks first, and it moved up 3.2 percentage points in a single quarter. The World Bank reached the same place from a different direction in its World Development Report 2026, which puts the UAE in the world's top 10 for ChatGPT use relative to internet users.

The measure has a weakness and Microsoft names it. The data comes from Microsoft's own telemetry and is adjusted rather than observed directly. Microsoft also says the next edition will count a wider set of AI tools. It expects that to raise the share in almost every economy, so 73.3% is a low estimate.

There is a structural reason behind the ranking. Age data published by DataReportal for October 2025 puts 52.5% of the UAE population between 25 and 44. That is the band where the shopping research finds AI use highest, with more than half of people in it saying AI has already changed how they browse. No European market has that shape.

AI and search are used together, so treat them as one job

The strongest finding in the report is also the least discussed. Of the sessions where an AI tool appeared, 89% involved a search engine as well. Only 11% used AI on its own. AI turns up in the middle of the session 76.1% of the time it is used, at the start 23.2% of the time and at the end 18.4%. Search turns up at the start in 50.0% of the sessions it appears in, in the middle in 59.5% and at the end in 56.2%.

People are stacking the two tools. They use AI to explore and compare, then return to search as they move towards buying. The sessions that use both are the longest, at almost 15 sites on average, and they convert the best.

That has a direct commercial consequence. A business paying for an AI visibility retainer alongside a separate search retainer is paying twice for one piece of work. The work is the same in both cases. Write pages that state price, specification, availability, delivery and who the product is for, in text a machine can read. Then answer the comparison question a buyer is actually asking. I have written about the practical side of that in how to show up in AI answers and what AI tools do with your brand.

Being named by an AI tool still brings traffic a week later

Similarweb tracked whether people visited the brand an AI tool had recommended, or the competing brand it had not, within the following seven days. Capital One drew 14.2% against 3.8% for the competitor. Kayak drew 12.0% against 3.4%. Sephora drew 7.9% against 3.3%.

The weakness here is real and should be said out loud when the figures are used: six brands, three sectors, six months of data, all of it American. What the pattern supports is a change in how the effect is treated. If being named by an AI tool produces measurable traffic a week later, it belongs in the acquisition model with a lag applied. Most marketing plans file it under brand awareness and never measure it at all.

The channel is small, and growing faster than everything around it

Referrals from generative AI tools account for 0.4% of ecommerce visits worldwide and under 1% in every category the report tracked. That is the smallest channel on the list. It also grew 203% in the year to June 2026, against 1.2% for direct traffic and 1.0% for organic search. In beauty it grew 271.4%, in fashion 259.3% and in home and garden 276.2%.

A channel at 0.4% does not need a budget line this year. It needs the groundwork now, because the groundwork is cheap and catching up is not. The groundwork is product and service pages written in readable text, a consistent description of what the business does wherever it appears, and enough third party mention that an AI tool has something to cite. All of that earns its keep in ordinary search as well, which is the point.

Where the growth is, and what it will cost to reach it

The Gulf appears in the report three times, always through Saudi Arabia. Saudi fashion visits grew 50.4% in the year to June 2026, the fastest of the 25 largest markets tracked. Saudi marketplace visits grew 22.8%, again the fastest. Saudi beauty grew 16.5%. There is no UAE figure anywhere in the report.

For the UAE the market figures come from elsewhere. Mordor Intelligence, in a report updated on 8 July 2026, puts UAE ecommerce at USD 12.30bn in 2026. That is AED 45.2bn at the pegged rate of AED 3.6725 to the dollar. The same report forecasts USD 21.01bn, or AED 77.2bn, by 2031. That is about 11.29% a year. Converting the Statista forecasts in the ecommerce report to the same basis gives about 5.5% a year for the United States and 3.9% for the United Kingdom. The UAE market is small and it is growing at two to three times the rate of the markets the research covers.

Treat the level with care. A second research house, ECDB, puts UAE ecommerce revenue at USD 8.13bn for 2025, which is a wide gap on a different definition and a different year. The direction is well supported. The exact size is not.

The cost side moves faster still. Research and Markets, in February 2026, put Middle East digital ad spend at USD 11.6bn in 2026, AED 42.6bn, reaching USD 18.5bn, AED 67.9bn, by 2029. That is about 16.9% a year. Media in this region is getting more expensive faster than the market it sells into, which is a margin question before it is a growth one. It is also the reason the free routes to demand, search and AI answers among them, are worth the effort now.

Five checks to run on your own site this week

1. Ask your five most common buying questions in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, once with your brand name and once without it, from a signed out browser. Write down who gets named. That list is your competitive set in AI answers, and it is often not the one you expected.
2. Open your three most important product or service pages and read them the way a machine would. Check that the price is there in text, along with the specification, the availability, the delivery time and who the product is for. Anything sitting inside a designed image or a downloadable PDF is invisible to an AI tool and to a search engine.
3. Find the AI referral line in your analytics and chart it as a growth rate rather than a share. A line sitting at 0.3% that trebles in a year is the one to watch.
4. Check what happens in the first hour after an enquiry arrives. Who replies, how quickly, and whether that person can answer the question. Discovery work is wasted if the response is slow.
5. Put a media inflation figure into next year's budget. 16.9% is the published regional rate for digital ad spend growth and it is a defensible starting assumption.

Sources. Similarweb and Statista, The State of Ecommerce 2026, read 23 September 2026. Microsoft, Global AI Diffusion Report, Q1 2026 published 7 May 2026 and Q2 2026 published 21 September 2026. World Bank, World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence. PYMNTS Intelligence with Visa Acceptance Solutions, UAE digital shopping study, published 3 September 2026, fieldwork March 2026, 1,270 UAE consumers. Mordor Intelligence, United Arab Emirates ecommerce market, updated 8 July 2026. ECDB, UAE market data, 2026. Research and Markets, Middle East digital ad spend databook, 10 February 2026. DataReportal, Digital 2026: The United Arab Emirates, published late 2025 using data available in October 2025. Dollar figures converted at the pegged rate of AED 3.6725 to USD 1, 23 September 2026. Annual growth rates for the United States and the United Kingdom calculated from the published 2026 and 2030 revenue forecasts.