Nearly 5 million people in the UK are of South Asian heritage. That’s roughly one in every thirteen people.

Yet when Diwali arrives, treating all of them as a single audience is about as useful as running one Christmas campaign for the whole of Europe. That’s what makes Diwali such an interesting challenge for marketers. The festival may have a single name, but it spans different languages, traditions, shopping habits, and celebrations. Walk into Tesco or Asda during the festive season and you’ll find dedicated Diwali aisles sitting alongside Halloween displays, each serving a completely different shopper mission. And that’s where Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) starts to make sense. One campaign. Hundreds of creative possibilities. The right message finding the right audience without turning your media plan into a logistical headache.

So let’s explore what DCO actually is, how UK retailers are publicly approaching Diwali, and why the festival offers a compelling lesson in creative personalization at scale.

TL;DR

• DCO is a form of programmatic advertising that automatically assembles images, copy, offers, and CTAs to create different versions of an ad.
• The South Asian diaspora in the UK is close to 5 million people, about 7.5% of the population, concentrated in specific cities and boroughs, which makes geo- and language-based creative targeting practical at scale.
• Retailers such as Asda and Tesco have publicly shown their focus on Diwali through dedicated products, sections, and festive creative. However, neither has publicly shared details of a DCO setup for diaspora targeting.
• DCO campaigns aimed at diaspora audiences typically vary creative along a handful of axes: language/script, festival-specific imagery (diyas, rangoli, gold and jewellery cues), regional promotions, and countdown-style urgency tied to the Diwali date, which shifts each year.
• 56% of marketers say running DCO across multiple channels or formats is an important part of their strategy, evidence that creative personalization at scale is now a mainstream tactic, not an experimental one.

What is Dynamic Creative Optimization, and why does it matter for festival marketing?

Dynamic Creative Optimization is a programmatic advertising technique that automatically builds an ad using different creative elements. These elements can include:

• Background
• Product image
• Headline
• Value proposition
• Call to action

Instead of creating one ad and showing it to everyone, DCO uses data available at the time of the impression to decide which combination of elements to show based on real-time data about the viewer. For example, one campaign could use the same overall design but show different products, messages, or images to different audience segments. A single master template could therefore create hundreds or even thousands of ad variations without a designer having to build each one manually.

For Diwali, this can be useful because different audiences may respond to different messages. The same national campaign can show a Hindu family lighting diyas to one segment, a Sikh family celebrating Bandi Chhor Divas to another, and a “festival of lights” gifting message to a third, all from the same underlying media buy. The important point is that DCO enables this variation at scale.

How large is the South Asian diaspora in the UK?

The 2021 UK Census recorded close to 5 million people of South Asian heritage, including people with Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and other South Asian backgrounds. This represents around 7.5% of the UK population. The population is also concentrated in areas such as London, Birmingham, and Leicester.

For advertisers, this matters because a large and geographically concentrated audience can make targeted advertising more practical. Instead of building separate campaigns manually for every small audience, advertisers can use DCO to combine audience signals with multiple creative variations. For example, location could help determine which audience is being reached, while language or other available signals could help determine which creative version is shown.

What does Diwali mean for retail spending among the diaspora, in practical terms?

Diwali drives concentrated spending across a specific set of categories: gold and jewellery, new clothing, home decoration, sweets, and gifts. That’s a narrower and more predictable basket than general holiday shopping, which is part of why retailers build dedicated Diwali sections rather than folding festival product into general assortments. It also means creative built for this audience can be more specific than typical “holiday sale” messaging, pointing directly at gifting, home refresh, and festive apparel rather than generic discounting.

How have UK retailers publicly approached Diwali creative and assortment?

Saintsbury’s, Asda, and Tesco balanced Diwali and Halloween merchandising during the 2024 season by stocking rice, oil, and sweets in dedicated Diwali sections. This is a lower-tech version of the same principle DCO automates digitally: recognizing that a single seasonal period contains multiple, non-overlapping customer intents (Halloween shoppers and Diwali shoppers browsing the same store in the same week) and serving each one something relevant instead of one blended message.

What creative elements does DCO typically vary for a diaspora audience segment?

DCO works by combining creative assets with data signals such as location, behaviour, and demographics. For a Diwali campaign, advertisers could potentially vary:

Language and script: Creative could be adapted for different languages or scripts, including English, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, or Urdu.

Visuals: Different creative versions could use elements associated with Diwali and other cultural celebrations, such as diyas, rangoli patterns, flowers, jewellery, or festive colours.

Product focus: The product shown could change depending on the audience or campaign objective. For example:

• Jewellery for a gifting-focused audience
• Clothing for festive shopping
• Home products for people preparing their homes
• Food and sweets for festive celebrations

Timing: Diwali does not fall on the same Gregorian calendar date every year. DCO can therefore support creative that changes as the festival approaches, such as countdown messaging or last-minute shopping prompts.

What data signals feed a DCO campaign built around a cultural calendar moment?

DCO has traditionally made extensive use of third-party cookie data and behavioural profiles. That approach is changing as privacy regulations and changes to third-party cookies reshape digital advertising. DCO can also use first-party data, contextual signals, and real-time feeds. For a Diwali campaign, useful signals could include:

Geo-location: Areas with a high concentration of multicultural audience

Language preference: Language settings provided by the user or device

Context: South Asian multicultural media, relevant content, or diaspora-focused environments

First-party data: Where users have provided consent and the advertiser has relevant data

Retailer data: For example, relevant loyalty or customer data where permitted

The goal isn’t simply to identify someone as “South Asian” and show them a Diwali ad. The goal is to use available signals to understand whether the message is relevant and then select the most appropriate creative.

Do marketers actually treat multi-version creative as a standard practice now?

Yes. It is becoming increasingly common among marketers using programmatic advertising. A Yahoo survey found that 56% of marketers considered running DCO across multiple channels or formats an important part of their overall strategy. This points to a wider shift in digital advertising. Instead of creating one piece of creative and hoping it works across every audience, advertisers can create a flexible system that produces different versions for different situations. For marketers working with large and diverse audiences, this can make creative personalization much easier to manage.

What goes wrong when diaspora-targeted creative is built without enough data granularity?

The biggest mistake is treating “South Asian” as one single audience. South Asia includes many different countries, languages, religions, and cultural traditions. Not everyone within the South Asian multicultural population celebrates Diwali. Diwali is primarily associated with Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and some other communities, while other South Asian communities may not observe the festival. Even among people who do celebrate it, traditions can differ by region and community.

For example, Sikhs may observe Bandi Chhor Divas, which takes place around the same period but has a different cultural and religious significance. This means simply finding a postcode with a high South Asian population and showing everyone the same Diwali ad can create the same problem DCO is designed to solve: irrelevant creative. Good audience targeting needs to consider more than ethnicity or location. The more relevant audience signals an advertiser can use responsibly, the better it can match the creative to the audience.

FAQs

Is DCO the same thing as programmatic advertising?

No. Programmatic is how an ad is bought and placed automatically; DCO is what determines which version of the creative gets shown once that placement happens.

Does DCO still work without third-party cookies?

Yes, it can run on first-party data, contextual signals, and real-time feeds instead of cookie-based tracking.

What’s the minimum data needed to run a DCO campaign?

Audience data (from a CRM, DMP, or CDP), a library of modular creative assets, and a platform to assemble and test combinations.

Is the South Asian diaspora the same as “Indian” audiences?

No, it spans India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and other countries, with multiple religions and languages, only some of which observe Diwali.

When should Diwali campaigns start relative to the festival date?

Diwali’s date shifts yearly on the Gregorian calendar, so campaigns tied to it need lead time built in rather than a fixed calendar trigger.

Final Takeaway

UK retailers are clearly treating Diwali as a distinct retail opportunity. Asda and Tesco have both publicly documented dedicated Diwali products and merchandising alongside other seasonal campaigns. What isn’t publicly documented is the specific DCO infrastructure behind their digital advertising. For media buyers and adtech teams, the bigger lesson is how well DCO fits the structure of a festival campaign like Diwali.

The audience is large and geographically concentrated. The key shopping categories are relatively clear. And the audience itself is diverse, meaning one creative message may not work for everyone. DCO gives advertisers a way to build multiple creative variations from a single campaign framework and match those variations to relevant audience and contextual signals. The opportunity isn’t simply to make more ads. It’s to make more relevant ads at scale.