Microsoft’s FY27 rules have retired the “Partner Website and Search Engine” Co-op category and replaced it with “Paid Media with Multi-Touch Campaign.” To qualify now, your demand generation content has to include paid media, plus at least two other activities, run as one coordinated campaign. Here’s what changed, why, and how to keep your content claimable.
For years, plenty of partners have used Co-op to cover content they’d have made anyway. That door has shut.
The new category, like it’s name suggests, is really a set of instructions. Paid media has to sit at the centre of all content. Combined with two more activities, drawn from a fixed list: a landing page, email or direct mail, blogs or videos, SEO, LLMO or GEO work, webinars, or a customer case study. And Microsoft’s wording is blunt about how these activities fit together. They have to run as a unified campaign, not as independent tactics.
The rules became live at the end of July 26, so they cover whatever you’re planning this half. The full definition of what’s in and out of scope can be found in the Partner Incentives guide, to access you’ll need your partner login.
Why Microsoft changed the rules
It’s worth understanding the thinking behind the new rules, because it is a strong indicator where this goes next.
Everything about Microsoft’s FY27 points at growth. Rob Smith of Pargentic, who helps Microsoft Partners navigate their funding and incentives, puts it plainly. “If your model is based off a strong, incumbent customer base that isn’t growing, you’re not going to earn any incentives,” he says. Incentives split between rebate and Co-op, so a partner living off renewals loses both.
Microsoft reckons around 75% of partners currently under-invest in demand generation. That’s why the co-op funding focus has shifted to ‘encourage’ Partners to spend more on demand gen activities. As Rob says, “This year it’s advisory. Next year it will likely be mandatory,” with a set minimum amount having to be spent on these activities from FY28.
So take this year’s rule change as a gentle version of what’s to come.
What counts, and what gets caught
Picture the person reviewing your co-op claim. They can’t see your strategy, your intentions or the thinking behind it. They can only see whether the pieces you’re claiming for look like they belong together.
Ticking three boxes in the new rules isn’t the same as having a coherent campaign. For example, you can’t claim an old blog, a bit of ad spend, with different audiences, different messages, three months apart, is a ‘campaign’
What Microsoft is looking for is: one audience. One message. One window. That’s a claimable campaign.
There’s some good news buried in Microsoft’s own wording: it says organic social is eligible to be claimed for, as long as it’s part of a wider campaign. And if you pay to boost those posts, that ticks the ‘paid media’ element of the claim.
The evidence has tightened
Microsoft’s preferred proof is a single detailed third-party invoice, itemised line by line, clear enough that a reviewer who knows nothing about your business can see what was done, when, and where. Fall short of that and you’re likely to be rejected.
So, here’s what you’re going to need:
- A screenshot of the paid ad. Non-negotiable, it’s the anchor of the claim.
- Two pieces of creative evidence from the list: a website link or photos, a blog link, social posts, emails, a webinar registration page or invite, or a case study.
- The platform execution report from LinkedIn, Google Ads, Meta or wherever the money went, showing the date range and the impressions, clicks or leads.
Rob is direct about what no longer works. An invoice reading “retainer, one month, $5,000” will “no longer pass muster.” That’s a change for any agency billing by the month, ours included, which is why we now itemise every campaign invoice by activity.
Adding the paid bit in without the headache
Don’t panic. This is a smaller job than it sounds, and it needn’t touch your team at all.
All you need to do is boost what you’re already organically publishing on socials. That means a few well-targeted LinkedIn posts, running alongside a blog, a landing page or a case study, will anchor a compliant campaign perfectly well. The skill is in planning it as one campaign from the outset and capturing the evidence as you go, rather than reconstructing it afterwards.
We can help with the whole thing. We’ll plan and write the campaign, then run the paid side: a LinkedIn ad campaign, or boosting your organic posts as part of a targeted push. It’ll run from your own ad account, on your budget cap, and we’ll never see your card details or logins. At the end of each month we’ll give you the platform report, ready to go into the claim.
There’s four ways of working with us, depending on your budget. Demand Starter for a compact campaign. Content Scaler for a single service or sector. Campaign Accelerator for a three-month push. Demand Generation Partnership to run it as an ongoing programme.
FAQs
We’ve got a content invoice sitting with no paid element. Are we stuck?
Possibly not, but don’t just bolt an ad onto it. The claim needs to read as one campaign, and retrofitting paid spend to finished work is precisely what gets flagged. Talk to your Co-op contact before you resubmit, and check your claim window while you’re there.
How much do we need to spend on ads for it to count?
Microsoft sets no minimum proportion. It has to be genuinely present and evidenced, not a token £20. Several other Co-op categories do carry hard caps, though, so check those before you plan your split.
Does boosting a post really count, or do we need proper ads?
It counts. Microsoft names paid amplification of organic content as an eligible expense. A boosted post produces the same platform report as an ad campaign, which is what the claim rests on.
Who owns proving the return on all this?
The claiming partner does, not the agency. Microsoft is watching the relationship between spend and result, and Rob expects that to harden into something enforced next year. Worth building the habit of tracking it now.
Don’t wait to be told
There’s an odd thing about this rule change. Strip away the compliance language and Microsoft is essentially insisting partners do the one thing that grows a business: put real money behind reaching people who’ve never heard of you. Now there’s funding attached to doing it, and a deadline attached to not.
