From October 12, 2026, Google Ads will read promotional offers off your website — coupons, percentage-off deals, seasonal specials — and attach them to your Search and Performance Max ads on its own. The setting is on by default. If an old or wrong offer is still on your site, that is the offer Google may show.
What is Google Ads actually switching on on October 12?
A feature called automated promotions, which scrapes deals from your own website and adds them to your ads without you creating anything.
In its own announcement, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable on October 5, 2026, Google says: "Starting October 12, 2026, Google Ads will automatically identify and extract high-quality promotions, such as coupons and deals, from your website and apply them directly to your campaigns." Google’s own help documentation describes automated promotions as a feature that "highlights valid, high-quality deals and offers directly within your ads".
The feature itself is not brand new — Search Engine Roundtable first reported it on September 7, 2026. What changes on October 12 is scale: eligible accounts get it switched on rather than having to ask for it.
One detail from Google’s help page explains odd behaviour you may see: each automated promotion is eligible to serve for less than 24 hours, after which Google may re-enable it if the offer is still verifiable on your website. A promotion can appear, disappear and reappear without anyone touching the account.
Which of my campaigns does this affect?
Search and Performance Max campaigns that have location assets attached, and that do not already have promotion assets of their own.
Per Google’s help documentation, a campaign is eligible when it is an active Search or Performance Max campaign (including local ad campaigns), has location assets attached, has no existing manual promotions running, and complies with normal Google Ads policy. That catches a lot of local accounts: if you advertise a service area with your address linked, you probably qualify.
It also means there is a simple shield. A campaign that already runs its own promotion assets is not eligible — taking control of the promotion is the cleanest way to stop Google choosing one for you.
Why does this matter more for a small business than for a big brand?
Because small-business websites are where stale offers live longest.
A national retailer has someone whose job is the website. A six-truck plumbing company has a "$50 off your first service call" banner that went up in the spring and nobody took down, plus a seasonal tune-up special three clicks deep. Google does not know which of those you still honour. It only knows it can find them.
The second risk is margin. A promotion in the ad lifts click-through rate — that is the point of it — but it also pulls in people who came for the discount. If that discount is one you quietly retired, you are buying clicks against a price you never agreed to.
| Automated promotions | Manual promotion assets | |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the offer | Google, from your website | You, in the ad account |
| On by default from Oct 12, 2026 | Yes, for eligible campaigns | No |
| Campaign eligibility | Search and Performance Max with location assets, no existing promotions | Any campaign you add them to |
| Control over wording and dates | None | Full, including start and end dates |
| How long one serves | Under 24 hours, then may be re-enabled | Until you change or expire it |
| Blocks the automated version | — | Yes — a campaign with its own promotions is not eligible |
How do I turn automated promotions off?
In the Google Ads interface: Assets, then Account-level automated assets, then Advanced settings, then set Automated promotions to Off.
Google’s help page documents that path. Note the word "account-level" — this is not a per-campaign checkbox, so switching it off switches it off everywhere. If you want automated promotions on one campaign and not another, the lever is promotion assets on the campaign you want to protect, not the account setting.
Turning it off is a legitimate choice, not distrust of automation. If your pricing is quoted per job, or your "offers" are really negotiating positions, nothing on your site should be read out loud in an ad.
Should I leave it on?
Leave it on if your website’s offers are current and you would be happy to see any of them in an ad. Turn it off otherwise.
E-commerce and retail accounts with a real, dated promotion calendar usually gain here: the offer is accurate and surfacing it in the ad is what you would have done manually. Service businesses that quote on site, and anyone whose website has not been audited this year, are most likely to be surprised.
Either way, this is account hygiene before it is strategy — the same category as auditing what your Google Ads management is doing with automated assets generally, which is one of the first things we check on a new account.
What to do this week
- Open your own website as a stranger would and write down every offer you can find, including the ones on old landing pages, in the footer and on service pages you forgot about. That list is what Google has to work with.
- Honour it or kill it. Anything on that list you no longer offer comes off the site this week — before October 12, not after.
- Check whether your campaigns are eligible: Search or Performance Max, location assets attached, no promotion assets of their own. Those are the ones that will change.
- Decide the setting deliberately. Either add your own promotion assets with explicit dates, or go to Assets, Account-level automated assets, Advanced settings and set Automated promotions to Off.
Frequently asked questions
Will automated promotions cost me more money?
Not directly — there is no extra fee, and a promotion shown in your ad can improve click-through rate. The cost risk is indirect: an inaccurate or retired offer attracts clicks from people shopping for that price, and those clicks are paid for whether or not you honour the deal. Treat it as a margin question rather than a budget question, and the answer depends entirely on how current your website’s offers are.
Do I need to do anything if I already use promotion assets?
Probably not. Google’s documentation says campaigns with existing manual promotions are not eligible for automated promotions, so a campaign you already manage this way is effectively opted out. The thing worth checking is whether every eligible campaign has them — accounts often have promotion assets on a flagship Search campaign and nothing on the Performance Max campaign sitting next to it.
Can I see which automated promotions Google showed?
Account-level automated assets appear in the Assets section of your Google Ads account, where you can review what has been generated. Because each automated promotion is eligible to serve for under 24 hours before Google may re-enable it, what you see on any given day is a snapshot, not the full record — so check more than once in the first fortnight rather than looking in once on October 13.
Does this affect Canadian accounts the same way?
Google’s announcement sets a single October 12, 2026 date and describes eligibility by campaign type and location assets, not by country, so Canadian accounts should expect the same treatment. We have not seen a Canada-specific carve-out published. If your offers vary by province, that is an argument for manual promotion assets with the wording you control.
Not sure what your account is about to start saying on your behalf? Get a free 48-hour audit — our ex-Googler founder’s team will go through your automated assets and your live offers before the switch flips.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable, October 5, 2026; Search Engine Roundtable, September 7, 2026; Google Ads Help: About automated promotions; Google Ads Help: About account-level automated assets.