Saudia CCO Arved von zur Muehlen on Why the Future of Marketing Starts with Commercial Outcomes

With double-digit revenue growth and a double-digit reduction in cost of sale, the airline’s evolving growth model offers a glimpse into a more responsive, AI-enabled future

23rd September 2026 – A cross-solution marketing transformation led by Arved von zur Muehlen, EVP andChief Commercial Officer at Saudia, has delivered significant growth and efficiency gains for the airline in the first half of 2026 achieving double-digit global revenue growth, improved return on ad spend and a double-digit reduction in cost of sale compared with H1 2025. Built and run by  Incubeta MENA, the marketing outcomes agency, the approach connects data, media, creative and technology into a single growth system that answers to commercial results rather than marketing activity.

The results were achieved during a volatile period for the aviation sector, where traveller intent, demand, pricing and load factors continued to shift alongside seasonal peaks and regional disruption. For Saudia, this highlighted the need for a model capable of responding to change in real time rather than relying on static marketing cycles.

At the centre of the approach is a growth system designed around relevance and commercial value. Saudia sets the commercial priorities and definition of a valuable booking, while Incubeta MENA has built and operates the system that connects these priorities across media, data, creative and technology.

Arved von zur Muehlen, Chief Commercial Officer at Saudia, said: “The conversation around AI can very quickly become about the technology itself, but from a commercial perspective, the more important question is what you are asking that technology to achieve. For us, the starting point was defining what a valuable outcome looks like for the business and then building the system around it. That changes the role of marketing from delivering activity to responding intelligently to demand and creating measurable commercial value.”

The model brings together live audience and behavioural signals with an integrated approach to search, dynamic creative and automated workflows. GenAI is used within the creative process to help assemble more relevant messaging for different audiences and moments, with the ambition not to simply produce more creative, but to respond to traveller intent with greater relevance, speed and scale.

The complexity of that challenge is significant. Saudia’s model accounts for 50 booking behaviours and more than 200 micro-personas, served by more than 2,000 creative variations live from a single dynamic creative library, while responding to an environment in which why, when and where people want to travel can change quickly. Rather than treating each component as a separate marketing discipline, the system is designed to allow signals to move through to creative execution and media decisions as demand evolves.

For Katerina Bazalova, Managing Director, Incubeta MENA, the work reflects a broader shift in what businesses should expect from their marketing partners: accountability for commercial outcomes and better deployment of a client’s marketing capital, particularly as AI makes it possible to act on customer signals at greater speed.

Bazalova said: “There is a lot of focus on what AI allows marketers to produce, but volume alone is not the opportunity. Our clients do not buy activity from us. They buy an outcome: revenue, marketing maturity and growth they can measure. The real value comes from connecting technology, data, media and creative around an outcome the business actually cares about.And it has to deliver the long and the short of it: capturing demand today while building the brand that wins market share tomorrow.  In this case, we have been able to build around Saudia’s commercial priorities and measure the impact through revenue, return on ad spend and cost of sale. That level of accountability is where we believe the industry needs to go.”

While the first-half results demonstrate the impact of the approach today, the longer-term opportunity lies in how these systems evolve as AI becomes increasingly embedded in consumer behaviour.

In travel, booking journeys are expected to become less reliant on the traditional search-and-select model as AI agents increasingly participate in discovery and decision-making on behalf of travellers. For airlines, this will place even greater importance on having clear commercial priorities and the data and systems required to ensure their products and offers remain relevant and discoverable as the way people search and book evolves.

For von zur Muehlen, this means the fundamentals behind AI adoption will become as important as the technology itself. Businesses will need to be clear about the value they are trying to create, what they want their systems to optimise for and how quickly they can respond as customer intent changes.

The next phase will see the model continue to evolve through agentic technology and systems designed to adapt continuously to changing traveller behaviour and demand. Saudia’s agentic agenda is already mapped: performance marketing agents for signals, spend, creative and offers, orchestrated by a single intelligence layer and full ownership of its own models and logic. For Incubeta MENA, this evolution confirms the changing role of the agency: from a supplier of channels and outputs to a partner that builds, runs and is accountable for the system that builds on existing client ecosystems and grows the business .

About Incubeta

Incubeta is a marketing outcomes agency, commercially accountable for the results it delivers. Based in Dubai, it builds and runs integrated growth systems across media, data, creative and technology for leading brands in the Middle East and North Africa, measured on revenue, efficiency and marketing maturity rather than activity.