Thirty-nine days that shook adland

Advertisement

The US-Israeli war on Iran may have lasted just 39 days, but its impact on the UAE’s media and marketing industry is likely to be felt for much longer. From cancelled campaigns and slashed budgets to changing consumer behaviour and declining client confidence, the conflict sent shockwaves through an ecosystem built on growth, optimism, and investment.

The level and extent of that impact, however, remains difficult to quantify, not least because so few are willing to discuss it publicly. While anecdotal evidence points to widespread disruption, many agencies remain reluctant to acknowledge the scale of the challenges they have faced.

So, what has been the impact of a deeply unnecessary and hugely unpopular conflict (81 per cent of respondents across 31 countries said their country should avoid getting involved in the war, according to Ipsos), and how long might its effects linger? A war, let us not forget, that not only coincided with Ramadan, but is historically unpopular with the US public.

“We can’t really tell at the moment,” replies Eddy Rizk, chief executive of Big Kahuna Films. “The thing is, Ramadan is usually a quiet period anyway. Last year, we had almost two months that were completely dead, but the second half of the year made up for it. This time, we thought it would last about a month, and then maybe another two weeks for things to get back on track. Well, first, it hasn’t ended yet. Second, nothing has really gone back on track.”

The production house has managed to keep things ticking over, thanks in no small part to a Dubai Tourism campaign shot during the war, and a 30-minute documentary for e&, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. However, several projects tied to the FIFA World Cup 2026, which should have been a commercial boon for the industry, were cancelled. “At the beginning, I thought, ‘Fine, it’s a month or two’,” says Rizk. “But it seems to be dragging on much longer, and now we’re heading into summer. I’m still hopeful about the last quarter. If that doesn’t improve things, then this will be our worst year ever, worse even than Covid.”

Getting anyone in the industry to admit this, however, is a challenge. The majority of agencies contacted for this piece either declined to comment or did not respond. Aside from Big Kahuna Films, only two groups - WPP Media and Publicis Groupe Middle East - agreed to comment at length, providing the much-needed context required to paint a clearer picture of the challenges facing the sector. Others, meanwhile, offered only limited observations. FP7 McCann, for example, acknowledged some budget cuts and delayed activity but maintained that the conflict had not materially altered its long-term plans.

And yet, from 28 February until the ceasefire took effect on 8 April, the media and advertising industries were among the hardest hit. As Jennifer Fischer, Chief Innovation and Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe Middle East, explains, when clients hesitate, agencies feel the impact instantly. “When the crisis came, we felt an immediate reduction in spending, particularly at the height of the uncertainty when it was unclear how long this would continue for,” she says. “But not all categories were impacted the same way. Hospitality and automotive were amongst the most affected. Categories like FMCG didn’t cut entirely, they shifted, leaning more into performance marketing, more shopper, more targeted communication, less brand building. And some categories, like banking, actually kept spending.” 

This uneven picture is reflected across the wider advertising landscape. Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President of Business Intelligence at WPP Media, says the conflict has materially altered the group’s expectations for the year, with its “pre-conflict forecast of high single-digit regional ad growth” now “compressed to mid-single digits” under its base-case scenario. While she stresses that “the long-term opportunity driven by demographics, sovereign capital, and digital transformation remains structurally intact”, the immediate impact has been uneven. “Channels like OOH” have faced “significant disruption from decreased foot traffic and travel”, she notes, while digital channels, including social, retail media, and search have proved “more resilient due to the perception of increased flexibility and defensible, performance-led budgets”. The same pattern can be seen across advertiser categories. “We anticipate that travel and tourism will see the greatest impact in the near term,” she adds, while ecommerce, financial services, and AI technology are expected to be more resilient.

Aside from budget cuts and shifting media priorities, amid all the interceptions, text alerts, and uncertainty, consumer behaviour also changed. With the streets largely empty, tourists leaving in large numbers, and the less steadfast making a swift exit (an estimated one in eight British residents fled), people spent more time at home - watching more TV, spending longer online, and ordering in rather than shopping in person. As a result, at-home categories such as streaming, groceries, gaming, and online shopping surged. “There was less in-person experience overall. And while confidence held, people did delay some of the bigger purchases in the midst of the uncertainty,” says Fischer, who argues that the more significant story was not the size of budgets but where they were directed. “Very few brands fully paused. Most reallocated, redirecting money out of brand building and out-of-home into e-commerce, performance, and lower-funnel channels. What clients wanted above all was accountability and adaptability, more measurable outcomes, plans that could flex as sentiment shifted.” 

“The interesting tension for brands was around presence,” she adds. “There’s a real risk in going dark when consumers are actively watching who shows up. But there’s an equal risk in showing up with the wrong tone, something that feels tone-deaf or opportunistic. What the younger consumers told us was clear: keep communication calm and respectful, not dramatic. Offer something practical. Be reliable. The brands that do recovery right are the ones leading with calm presence and genuine usefulness, not volume or noise.”

The disruption was most acute during the 39 days of active conflict. What has happened since is less clear-cut. While some sectors have begun to recover and certain clients have returned to the market, others continue to struggle with the after-effects of the crisis. Whether a quick and sustained recovery is evident depends on who you talk to and which sector they operate in. Production, as Rizk explains, has been particularly badly hit, and there appears to be no end in sight to the slowdown. And while some clients may be returning, many others have cut spending entirely, are ghosting their agencies, or have come back with only a fraction of their 2026 budgets. The impact on agencies, especially independents without the luxury of network support, has in many cases been extremely painful (see article addressing the impact on agencies). Non-payment, redundancies, salary cuts, and hiring freezes have become all too familiar, particularly for independents and the public relations industry.

“We’re grateful for where we are,” says Rizk. “Last year was very good, and the year before was good as well. We’ve had continuous growth, and the company is financially healthy. We have enough stability to withstand periods like this. But we’ve adapted to the reality of the market. We try to adjust to available budgets, and we’ve negotiated better rates across the board—for crew, equipment, locations, and everything else. A location in Dubai that might previously have charged AED 50,000 a day may now accept half that amount. Before, they didn’t really need your business. Now everyone is trying to make things work together. But if this situation continues beyond the summer, then we’ll have serious problems. Everyone is suffering. Everyone is hungry for clients, trying to keep existing clients and win new accounts.”

There are, of course, green shoots of optimism. Although Scott-Dawkins says advertising growth across the region is expected to be softer this year than the eight per cent forecast in WPP Media’s This Year, Next Year report, the region’s fundamentals -population growth, government investment, tourism ambitions, digital adoption, and retail transformation -remain intact and point to significant growth through to the end of the decade. According to her, the “underlying trends across government investment, GDP growth, and consumer spending leading up to the conflict, point to this being a disruption to anticipated growth, rather than a structural breakdown of consumer confidence and spending”.

Fischer agrees. “The return to normal has already started in a big way,” she says. “Many people are back in the market, we’re seeing tourists again. It’s not fully solved, there’s still some uncertainty about what comes next, but recovery is well underway. And the way I’d think about it is as a sequence rather than a single event. Clarity and stability, then people and demand returning, then supply chains normalising, which is the longest to clear. Different sectors are waiting on different gates, so recovery will be uneven rather than uniform.”

What gives her confidence is that none of this is structural; it is operational and time-bound. Like Scott-Dawkins, she does not believe any of the UAE’s fundamentals have changed. Talent attractiveness, inward investment, infrastructure, and the ambition to be a global hub all remain intact. That view is reinforced by Publicis Groupe Middle East’s Resilience Business Pulse, which found strong confidence in the UAE’s long-term trajectory despite the disruption caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. “If anything, disruption has accelerated structural reform here, not reversed it,” says Fischer. “The most telling signal in our research was that every single leader expressed confidence in the country’s trajectory.”

Despite the confidence, only the final quarter of the year will reveal the true extent of the disruption and whether those green shoots of optimism were justified.