By the Mayab Media Team
Google can now advertise a discount you never agreed to advertise. That's the short version of this update, and most accounts we look at won't notice until a margin report looks off.
Here's the thing. A discount on your website and a discount in your ads aren't the same decision. One is a quiet offer for people who already found you. The other is a megaphone. Google just got permission to pick up the megaphone on your behalf.
What actually changed
Google emailed some advertisers in early October with a simple message: starting October 12, 2026, Google Ads would automatically find promotions on advertisers' websites and attach them to campaigns as promotion assets. Search Engine Roundtable published the email on October 5.
The details that matter:
- It applies to Search and Performance Max campaigns that have linked location assets and don't already have promotion assets.
- It's opt-out. You're in by default.
- The off switch lives in your account-level automated assets settings, under "Automated Promotions." It's account-wide. Google's email doesn't mention a campaign-level option.
- According to PPC Land's breakdown, promotion assets only show in the Assets section once they've actually served. Offers that were attached but never shown won't appear there.
Google describes the promotions it picks up as "high-quality" and "valid." It doesn't define either word. We also don't know which regions are covered or how lapsed offers get handled. PPC Land's earlier reporting mentioned each sourced promotion being re-verified within 24 hours, but Google hasn't spelled that out in the email itself.
Why this hits your wallet
Think about what lives on a typical business website. A first-order code in a pop-up. A "15% off for veterans" banner on one page. A clearance sale on three SKUs. An expired holiday deal nobody took down.
Each of those was designed for a specific person in a specific context. When an ad shows "15% off" to every searcher, three things can happen, and none of them are great by default:
- You discount people who would've paid full price. A local service business with a strong brand doesn't need to lead with a coupon on a branded search. That's margin you just gave away.
- You make a promise your checkout won't keep. If the extracted offer has conditions (minimum order, specific products, new customers only) and the ad doesn't carry them clearly, you get angry callers and abandoned carts.
- Your reporting gets muddy. If CPA drops next week, was it your new landing page or a discount you didn't know was running?
We're not saying promotion assets are bad. When you control them, they can lift click-through rate on the right campaigns. Our problem is with the default. Your pricing strategy should be a choice you make, not a side effect of a crawler.
Your 20-minute check this week
Do this for every account with Search or PMax campaigns and location assets.
- Find out if you're even eligible. Go to your campaigns and check which ones have location assets linked. If none do, this update doesn't touch you yet. Note it and move on.
- Open the Assets report and filter for promotion assets. Look for anything you didn't create. Remember, only promotions that have served will show, so do this again in a week.
- Audit your own website like a robot would. List every discount mentioned anywhere on your site: banners, pop-ups, footer text, FAQ pages, old blog posts. Delete or update anything expired. If Google can read it, Google can advertise it.
- Decide your policy, then set it. Ask one question: "Would I happily pay for a click from someone who saw this discount?" If the answer is no for any offer on your site, turn Automated Promotions off at the account level.
- If you want promotions, add them manually. Google's email says campaigns that already have promotion assets are skipped. So a manual promotion asset you wrote, with your exact terms and dates, keeps you in charge. It also blocks the automated version on that campaign.
- Put a note in your change log. Write down the date you checked and what you decided. When someone asks in December why conversion rate jumped or margin dropped, you'll have the answer.
Our take
This is the fourth or fifth "on by default" asset change Google has pushed this year. The pattern is clear. Google's systems want more ad real estate filled, and they'll fill it with whatever they can find on your site.
That's fine if your site is clean and every offer on it is one you'd shout about. For most small and mid-sized businesses, it isn't. Old coupons hang around. Conditional offers live on random pages. And the ad doesn't care.
For our clients, our default is simple: we turn automated promotions off, then add manual promotion assets only on campaigns where a discount actually helps the numbers. Lead gen and high-ticket service accounts usually stay off entirely. Ecommerce accounts running a planned sale get a manual asset with the right dates.
You don't need to panic about this. You need 20 minutes and a clear rule.
Takeaway: If a discount is on your website, assume it can now show up in your ads, and decide on purpose whether that's OK.
Want us to check how this affects your account? Book a free audit.
