Gift them a reason: How to earn a place on the holiday shortlist

The audiences you build now are the demand you convert later. The average holiday conversion journey is 52 days, and 63% of shoppers start before Halloween.² Rather than waiting for a single holiday date, treat October as the window to build brand familiarity.

You can develop your audience strategies early by...

• Building audience lists early to ensure sufficient scale before peak.
  
• Using impression-based remarketing to build audience lists off of ad exposure from impressions. These can be helpful to nurture customers who might have seen your ad but not been ready to act.
  
• Separating prospecting and retargeting audiences into distinct campaigns so you can tailor bidding goals and messaging.
  
• Targeting users with in-market audiences who’ve displayed purchase intent in Search and Shopping campaigns to focus budget. They also can act as useful guides in new Performance Max asset groups as audience signals.
  
• Using similar audiences to target users based on behavioral similarities to your existing customer lists.
  
• Leveraging seasonal audiences such as Black Friday and Christmas segments to reach shoppers actively researching and purchasing in your category.

You’ll also want to reconnect with shoppers who may have seen your seasonal messaging earlier and are to make a purchase off their shortlist. By re-engaging and personalizing offers with remarketing, dynamic remarketing, and customer match, your brand will feel familiar when they return to find the right gift.

Health supplement brand NAOMI invested in its audiences before peak demand arrived by building and re-engaging high-intent audiences early, resulting in 800% higher conversions.

To build familiarity before demand peaks while giving shoppers a timely reason to choose you, pair your audience building with strong seasonal creative.

Inspiration-seeking queries, including gift guides, gift ideas, and custom gifting, have tripled year over year.³ This gives brands a timely opportunity to turn products into thoughtful possibilities before the choice is made.

Your product becomes more compelling when shoppers can picture the person, occasion, or feeling it belongs to, and imagine the moment it’s received. Shoppers are looking for inspiration as they explore products and giftable services, so your ads and shopping feeds should reflect gifting intent.

For example, someone searching for “coffee subscription” may be shopping for themselves or another person, while “gifts for coffee lovers” signals clearer gifting intent. Add gifting-oriented language to your ad copy and use Performance Max, AI Max and broad match to reach shoppers as they express their needs in new and varied ways.

Creative should evolve as shopper intent moves from discovery and research to deal-seeking and urgency. Use Performance Max and AI Max text customization and autogenerated assets for Audience ads to adapt messaging and creative to relevant shopper intent, while reducing the need for repeated manual ad changes.

During discovery, introduce gift ideas and inspiration-led messaging. As shoppers move into consideration, reconnect them with relevant products and offers. Closer to conversion, highlight time-sensitive information such as limited offers and shipping deadlines.

Other ways you can adapt your creative throughout the season include...

• Using Ads Studio to develop seasonal assets and update existing, top-performing assets faster.
• Leading with holiday or gifting-oriented messages, and highlighting any promotions, bundles, or other key differentiators.
• Providing multiple aspect ratios and variations for different placements to meet customer interests and needs across diverse platforms like AI-powered experiences.

Ray-Ban refreshed creative and audience strategies ahead of Black Friday to stay visible as shoppers researched and compared options, leading to an 80% lift in searches and a 15% increase in site visits heading into peak season.

AI shopping often starts with a need instead of a brand, and 76% of shoppers say they plan to use AI during holiday planning.⁴ The brands that influence consideration will be those that appear when shoppers ask for recommendations, explore options, or compare products.

Copilot opens that window especially early. Shopping and product research already accounts for 12.2% of all chats, and Copilot is often first to introduce a brand.⁵ Copilot ads bring advertising into these conversational experiences, where shoppers reveal deeper needs and preferences, adding a new way to reach them with a 5.7x higher CTR compared to Search.⁶

To engage with holiday shoppers on Copilot...

• Activate Performance Max, AI Max, or Shopping campaigns to capture demand in AI-driven discovery experiences across Bing and Copilot. This helps your brand remain visible as intent is increasingly expressed through questions and comparisons rather than traditional search terms.
• Add Offer Highlights through a custom field in your product feed to communicate relevant brand strengths—like free delivery, product guarantees, or flexible returns—when there's clear shopper intent.
• Ensure your product titles, descriptions, availability, pricing, and more are clear to show up organically in product cards, which are present in 14% of Copilot shopping sessions.⁷

By understanding your high-intent product categories, keeping your feed hygiene up to date, and taking advantage of AI-powered campaigns, you can shape preference before shoppers decide what belongs on their shortlist.

Engage audiences with visual experiences that influence choices before they enter high-intent purchase mode with Audience ads. Users who start their journey with an Audience ad exposure convert 6% more often across the season.⁸

With Audience ads, you can bring seasonal collections and gift ideas into premium environments then connect that engagement with Search and Performance Max as intent strengthens.

You can use visual experiences to turn inspiration into consideration by...

• Launching Audience ads before peak buying periods to build audience lists for remarketing to accelerate the path to purchase.
• Connecting shopping feeds to create dynamic, shoppable experiences for early shoppers.
• Using gift guides, seasonal collections, and featured products to entice audiences

LOOKFANTASTIC saw a 2.7X conversion lift by using Audience ads and connecting upper-funnel inspiration with search and conversion activity.

To take your upper-funnel strategy even further, Brand Solutions brings premium video experiences together across CTV, MSN, and gaming—including Xbox and King. It helps brands build awareness and consideration with valuable audiences across moments of high emotional engagement like gift giving. (Note: At this time, Brand Solutions is available in pilot for select U.S. advertisers. You can learn more by contacting your Microsoft Advertising representative.)

Across every touchpoint, reinforce one consistent promise: a gift that fits the person, the occasion, and the joy they hope to bring.

Holiday decisions form one idea and comparison at a time.

Show up while shoppers are still imagining who they want to delight, help them find the gift that feels right, earn a place on their shortlist, then stay recognizable and useful as consideration turns into action.

For more ways to get your campaigns holiday ready...

• Get our 2026 holiday guide, Unwrapping Performance: The Advertising Holiday Playbook.
• Watch our Winning Holiday Moments webinar series with local insights and market-specific tips.
• Connect with a Microsoft Advertising expert for personalized guidance, beta programs, and holiday campaign support.