Scale Up for the Holidays: Media Marketplace Simplifies Premium Cross-Channel Buying

Advertising can be complicated, especially when you factor in the upcoming holiday season and the multiple layers of platforms, partners, contracts, and processes that buyers must navigate. Activating campaigns with speed and efficiency requires access to the right information when planning media budgets. Microsoft Advertising’s new Media Marketplace cuts through that complexity with transparency by offering a streamlined, self-service experience built for today’s media buying needs. 

As the holiday season continues to get longer and consumer expectations rise, Media Marketplace empowers cross-channel buyers to celebrate smarter with curated package details and a streamlined path to activation—unlocking the full range of premium inventory across the Microsoft Advertising ecosystem.

Find media that meets your needs the holiday season and beyond 

With the holiday season approaching, advertisers face a familiar obstacle: navigating a fragmented programmatic ecosystem filled with challenges around brand safety, media quality, and transparency. It’s like trying to wrap gifts with tangled ribbon—frustrating and time-consuming. 

A recent study by the Programmatic Pioneers Summit confirms what many buyers feel: programmatic advertising has become increasingly convoluted, with programmatic marketers citing “too much complexity/too many layers in the ecosystem” as their top challenge.

That’s where Microsoft Advertising’s Media Marketplace brings holiday cheer, gifting buyers the ability to browse package categories and access nifty media planning tools. With 30+ demand-side platform (DSP) integrations, Media Marketplace allows a more simplified way to activate premium media so you can easily hit your marketing goals, just in time for seasonal and evergreen campaigns.

With Media Marketplace, you can: 

• Browse a curated catalog of packages, from Microsoft-owned properties like MSN and Outlook to premium publisher supply like The Guardian, Samsung, The Wall Street Journal and more. The catalog is easy to navigate with filters for different types of packages, categories, geographies, and more, while automatic updates help ensure details stay current.

• Understand the competitiveness of bids for packages, access deal domain and app lists, and even export source deal information using integrated planning tools that help inform your media buy.

• Scale your campaigns with premium packages, including curated options by format, multi- or single-publisher packages, performance-driven sets, and audience-targeted solutions. Unique offerings are also available—like curated packages on Microsoft inventory with Audigent, a leader in data and identity, or specialized bundles for gaming and cross-screen to reach holiday shoppers.

• Quickly activate any catalog package on your preferred demand-side platform with deal IDs.

Why buyers gravitate to an efficient Media Marketplace during the holidays and throughout the year

As the holiday season ramps up, advertisers are looking for ways to simplify their media buying and maximize impact. We find that buyers come to Media Marketplace because it helps them navigate the programmatic buying process with transparency and ease. It removes the friction that sometimes exists in the process by letting buyers: 

• Skip the sales sleigh ride: Buyers tend to only turn to salespeople when they require more detailed and nuanced information about a product or service, according to HubSpot. They prefer self-service, like with the Media Marketplace, because they can make decisions without pressure from a salesperson (66%) and the convenience of gathering information on their own (44%). There’s no need to wait for a sales rep when you’re racing to launch a campaign. 

• Grab and go gifting: With no additional contract, setup, official partnership, or dedicated technology required, buyers can quickly activate any programmatic advertising package within the global Media Marketplace through their preferred DSP, saving time, boosting efficiency, and getting campaigns live faster than Santa’s sleigh.