Google quietly turned on a feature called Automated promotions that scans your website for discounts and attaches them to your Search and Performance Max ads without asking first. It started applying to eligible accounts on October 12, 2026, and every qualifying campaign is opted in by default. If you run ads tied to a Google Business Profile location, go check the setting today. Black Friday is 13 days out, and a wrong auto-sourced offer in a live ad is worse than no offer at all.
What Are Google Ads' Automated Promotions?#
It's a new account-level automated asset. Per Google's own help documentation, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Ads identifies and sources promotions from your website landing pages" — Google's own example is a page advertising "20% off on black sweaters." The system reads that page, extracts the offer, and attaches it to eligible ads as a promotion asset, the same format used for a manually built one.
It applies to active Search and Performance Max campaigns with a linked Business Profile location asset and no manual promotion already running on that campaign, according to PPC Land's reporting on an internal Google notice. That notice frames it as "automatically opting" advertisers in "while they keep full control." Opt-out, not opt-in. The control is one toggle, buried in account-level automated assets.
Does This Affect Your Google Ads Account?#
If you don't run Search or Performance Max, or you've never attached a Business Profile location to a campaign, this changes nothing for you. Skip to the next story.
If you do, and you haven't built a promotion asset manually on that campaign, Google may already be pulling a discount off your site right now and showing it in your ads, picked without you choosing it. At WebEpex we checked this setting across every Search and Performance Max account we run for GCC and North American e-commerce clients the same week it started rolling out, because an auto-sourced offer going out wrong in Q4 costs a client's trust fast, not just a click.
The Honest Trade-Offs#
For a small business that never gets around to building promotion assets by hand, an automated one that actually matches store traffic is a real upside. More relevant ads, less manual work, free.
The honest problem is the input. Google hasn't published what counts as a "high-quality" promotion, and the system reads live landing pages, not a verified feed. An expired banner, a subscriber-only code, or a page you forgot to take down after last month's sale are all plausible things to get scraped and shown as if they're live. Reporting only shows assets that already got an impression, so if something's wrong, you might not see it until a customer complains at checkout.
My read: Google is betting most advertisers won't notice until something breaks. A similar default-on pattern is showing up in Shopify's own push into agentic commerce — platforms are increasingly deciding for you unless you go looking for the switch.
How We're Setting This Up Before Black Friday#
At WebEpex, we pulled the automated-assets settings for every client account we manage the week we found this, because an expired code in a live ad costs trust, not just a wasted click. Took us four days to notice one account was already serving a stale September sale code through the automated asset — no real damage, but exactly the failure mode we were worried about.
For most clients we're switching Automated Promotions off account-wide and replacing it with a manually built promotion asset for the real Black Friday offer, same mechanism, our choice of input this time. For the few accounts where the automated version has actually been accurate, we're leaving it on and adding our own promotion asset anyway, since a campaign with a manual promotion attached is excluded from automation by default. Belt and suspenders beats betting on a scraper reading a page correctly during Q4 traffic.
We also run a real test order against whatever code is about to go live, automated or not, before it goes near a campaign. Not glamorous. Catches the thing that actually breaks trust with a customer.
What to Check This Week#
Open account-level automated assets, find Automated Promotions, and check what it's currently showing, if anything. Decide on purpose instead of defaulting to it. Then build your real BFCM offer as a manual promotion in both Merchant Center and Google Ads — agencies are telling merchants to submit by around November 20, a week ahead of the 27th, for time to review it.
A few things worth doing regardless of account size:
- Check whether Automated Promotions is live on any Search or Performance Max campaign with a Business Profile location attached
- Run a real test order against any code your ads currently promise, auto-sourced or manual
- Submit your actual BFCM offer as a manual promotion well before November 20
- Note the date you made any change, so a metrics dip next week doesn't get blamed on the wrong thing
WebEpex now checks this exact setting on every Google Ads account we manage for clients across the GCC, Europe, and North America, every time a campaign goes live, not just this week. If you're also watching the Performance Max brand-query filter or the new Asset Activity beta, it's the same pattern again: Google automating more of the account by default, with control sitting one settings screen away from where you'd expect it.
If you want a second set of eyes on your account's automated-asset settings before Friday, send me what you're running — takes two minutes, no pitch attached. [cal.com/webepex/growth-review]
