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Microsoft's holiday advice: build audiences now
Microsoft Advertising's Oct 15 holiday post says to build audience lists early, refresh creative with gifting language and strengthen product feeds, and backs it with its own data on how early shoppers start.
Jerry Quin3 min read1 source
Illustration: The Keywordless.
The short answer
What changed
Microsoft Advertising published holiday guidance on Oct 15, 2026. It says shoppers have likely already narrowed their choices by the time promotions dominate, so it advises building audiences early, refreshing creative for gifting and strengthening product feeds. It isn't a product launch.
Who has it
Advertisers running Microsoft Advertising campaigns this holiday. The post doesn't list who is eligible for most of its tips, except Brand Solutions, which it says is available in pilot for select U.S. advertisers.
What I'd do this week
Check whether your audience lists are big enough to use at peak, and whether your prospecting and retargeting audiences sit in separate campaigns.
My take
Most of this is what marketers already know, but Microsoft is often forgotten, and it's a great way to find extra growth in Q4. Not huge numbers, but it's a way to branch out.
- Starting early is standard practice now, and pre-holiday, holiday and post-holiday ads all have their place. Not every brand has the budget to run in October, so they miss that early window. Personally, real conversions don't pick up until around the 10th to mid-November.
- Keeping prospecting and retargeting in separate campaigns has always been best practice, because combining them muddies the data. I also haven't seen a lift from gifting language in search ads in October, in the tests I've run over the years.
- Google is still the king of search, but Microsoft sees a lift in Q4 and is a good way to get incremental growth. Starting new campaigns in November is too late. Performance Max can take weeks to improve, but I trust it on Microsoft once it's out of the learning phase and ROAS starts to climb.
What Microsoft says
This is guidance, not a feature announcement. The post's argument is that by the time promotions dominate, shoppers have likely already narrowed their choices, so the work happens early.
Two sets of figures carry that argument, and both are Microsoft's own. From its internal 2025 U.S. retail data, the post says October clicks drive 56% of November conversions and 35% of December conversions. From its 2026 consumer survey, it says the average holiday conversion journey is 52 days and 63% of shoppers start before Halloween.
The post then gives four groups of advice.
- Audiences. Build audience lists early so they have enough scale before peak. Use impression-based remarketing, which the post says can help nurture customers who might have seen an ad but weren't ready to act. Keep prospecting and retargeting audiences in separate campaigns so each can have its own bidding goals and messaging. Add in-market audiences, similar audiences and seasonal audiences such as Black Friday and Christmas segments.
- Creative. The post says searches for gift guides, gift ideas and custom gifting have tripled year over year. It suggests gifting language in ad copy and in shopping feeds, and pairing that with Performance Max, AI Max and broad match. It also suggests changing the message as shoppers move on: gift ideas while they discover, relevant products and offers while they consider, and limited offers and shipping deadlines near the end.
- AI experiences. Microsoft says to activate Performance Max, AI Max or Shopping campaigns to capture demand in AI-driven discovery experiences across Bing and Copilot. It also says to add Offer Highlights through a custom field in the product feed to communicate relevant brand strengths, like free delivery, product guarantees or flexible returns, when there's clear shopper intent. And it says to keep product titles, descriptions, availability, pricing and more clear so they can show up organically in product cards.
- Audience ads. Launch them before peak periods to build lists for remarketing, and connect shopping feeds for shoppable formats.
Who has it
The post doesn't list eligibility for most of these tips. The exception is Brand Solutions, which the post says is available in pilot for select U.S. advertisers, with a Microsoft Advertising representative as the way to learn more.
What I'd do this week
These are my suggestions, not steps from Microsoft.
- Check list sizes. Look at your audience lists and note which ones are too small to use at peak. Those are the ones to grow first.
- Look at campaign structure. If prospecting and retargeting share a campaign, decide whether to split them before peak so each can have its own bidding goal.
- Audit the feed for gifting terms. Compare your product titles and descriptions with how people search for gifts in your category, and fix what's vague.
- Treat the numbers as Microsoft's. They come from its own data, so check your account's conversion paths before you move budget on the strength of them.
Jerry Quin
Jerry Quin is the pen name of a paid media practitioner who has managed Google Ads accounts at an agency for 10 years. He writes about Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, ChatGPT Ads, and the rest of paid media and digital marketing, from what's rolling out to what he'd actually do about it.