If your business advertises on Google with a campaign linked to your address, something changed this morning. Since 12 October, Google Ads turns on Automated promotions by default: it reads the offers shown on your website and adds them to your ads itself, without anyone entering them. The good news is zero effort. The bad news is that any offer still visible on your website becomes a candidate, including the one you forgot about.
What started on 12 October
The feature has been described since early September in the official help page "About Automated promotions". What's new is the email Google sent in early October to some advertisers, reported on 5 October by Search Engine Roundtable: from 12 October, those accounts are opted in automatically. You can opt out at any time, but you have to do it yourself.
How it works fits in one sentence of the documentation: "Google Ads identifies and sources promotions from your website landing pages." The example given says it all: if a page shows "20% off on black sweaters", Google extracts the offer and displays it right under your ad when someone searches for that product.
| Question | What Google says |
|---|---|
| Which campaigns? | Search and Performance Max, with location assets attached, including Local Ad campaigns |
| Which are left alone? | Those already running a manually entered promotion |
| Where does the offer come from? | Your website's pages |
| For how long? | Less than 24 hours, then re-enabled if the offer is still visible on the site |
| Where can I see it? | Under Promotion assets, labelled "Google AI" in the "Added by" column |
The detail that matters for you is in the first row. Location assets are what link a campaign to your address, usually through your Google Business Profile. In other words, the feature is aimed squarely at local businesses: Google says so itself, the goal is to encourage "both website purchases and physical store visits".
What Google is going to read on your website
Google promises "advanced verification" that only keeps active, non-expired offers. But look at the test it gives for extending a promotion beyond 24 hours: that the offer is "still visibly available on your website". Google adds that this "is expected to change in the future when Google can extract promotion start and end dates". Which means that today, it doesn't always read them.
So the deciding factor is what is written on your site, as it stands. And a local business website is rarely a model of promotional freshness:
| What's lying around on your site | What can end up in your ad |
|---|---|
| A "Summer sale" page never unpublished | A discount you no longer offer, presented as current |
| "10% off Tuesday lunchtime" or "with a student card" | An offer stripped of its condition, if the extraction doesn't keep it whole |
| "Free coffee on your first visit" | A promise shown to customers it doesn't apply to |
| An offer for only one of your shops | A discount highlighted on an ad that covers all your locations |
| No offers, or offers only inside images | Nothing: Google has nothing to extract, your ad stays as it is |
The first four rows are my analysis, not cases documented by Google. But they follow directly from its own test, and advertising specialists are raising the same questions: how an expired offer is detected, what exactly a "high-quality" promotion is, and the fact that the assets view only shows those that have already served. Above all, remember this: you are the advertiser. The offer shown under your ad commits you, even if a machine chose it.
The five-minute test, to do today. Search Google for site:yourwebsite.com promo, then again with discount, off and free. You'll get a list of every page on your site that mentions an offer, including the ones you haven't looked at in ages. Each one is a page Google Ads can read to fill your ads.
Why Google is doing this, and why it won't stop
Automated promotions are not an isolated gimmick. They are part of a deeper shift: machines increasingly write your ads from your website, just as they already write the answers that talk about you.
The same week, Google started testing a "Direct offer" asset in Google Ads, which shows a promo code under a sponsored result in AI Mode: the advertiser describes the offer in a few words, and Google's AI decides when to show it and how to word it. It's the logic I described about advertising moving into AI answers: the slot is bought, but the text is increasingly written by the machine.
And it's the same principle I covered last week with suggested edits to your Google Business Profile, where Google settles disputes using your website. Whether it's your opening hours, your answers or now your promotions, your website has become the source machines copy from. What's written there matters more than ever, including what you forgot to delete.
What it doesn't mean
- If you don't advertise on Google, you're not affected. Nothing shows in organic results or on your profile. There's nothing to do today, other than keeping a clean website, which helps with everything else anyway.
- It isn't necessarily a bad feature. A clearly visible offer under a local ad can make the difference between two neighbouring businesses, and Google points out that direct clicks on the promotion don't capture its full effect. If your site is clean and your offers are clear, leaving it on may well be worth it.
- Turning it off is not an admission of failure. Many businesses have offers too conditional to be summed up in one line by a machine. In that case, it's better to enter them yourself, in your words and with your dates.
- You may not have received the email. Google sent it to "some advertisers". If an agency or freelancer runs your ads, they probably got it. Ask them.
What to do, in order
- Check whether you're affected. A Google Ads account, an active Search or Performance Max campaign, location assets attached (your Google Business Profile linked to the account), and no manual promotion: if all four apply, you are.
- See what Google has already added. Campaigns, Assets, "Asset type" filter: Promotion. Anything labelled "Google AI" was added by the machine; hover over it to see where the offer came from.
- Inventory the offers on your website with the five-minute test above.
- Remove finished offers. Unpublish old promotion pages, take down banners that are no longer true. An expired offer has never earned anyone anything.
- Write every active offer in full, as text: what's on offer, to whom, on what conditions, and until when ("until 31 October"). What's clear to a person is clear to the machine too.
- Choose your level of control. To keep control of the wording and dates, create a Promotion asset yourself in the campaign: Google skips campaigns that already have one.
- Or turn it off. Assets, three-dot icon, "Account level automated assets", three-dot icon, "Advanced settings", "Automated promotions" menu: "Off".
- Tell your agency if it manages your account, and ask what it has chosen.
- Come back to it with every new promotion, and above all whenever one ends. The right habit: the day the offer ends, it disappears from the site.
Frequently asked questions
What are Google Ads Automated promotions?
An ad asset Google creates on its own: it spots an offer shown on your website's pages, for example "20% off on black sweaters", and adds it to your ads in search results. It applies to Search and Performance Max campaigns with location assets attached, including Local Ad campaigns, that aren't already running a manually entered promotion. Google has turned it on by default for some advertisers since 12 October 2026.
Is my business affected?
Only if you have a Google Ads account with an active Search or Performance Max campaign linked to your address through location assets (usually via your Google Business Profile), and no manual promotion. If an agency runs your ads, it probably received Google's email. If you don't advertise on Google, you're not affected today.
How do I see the promotions Google has added?
In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Assets, and filter by asset type "Promotion". Automated promotions show "Google AI" in the "Added by" column; hover over it to see where Google sourced the offer. This view only lists assets that have already served.
How do I turn off Automated promotions?
Campaigns, Assets, the three-dot icon in the filter bar, "Account level automated assets", the three-dot icon, "Advanced settings", then "Off" in the "Automated promotions" menu. Alternatively, create a Promotion asset yourself in the campaign. Google skips campaigns already running a manual promotion, and you keep control of the wording and dates.
Can Google show a promotion that has ended?
Google says it only picks active, non-expired offers, and serves each automated promotion for less than 24 hours before checking it's still visible on your website. So the test is visibility on the site. A "Summer sale" page still online is still visible. Removing or updating finished offers is the best way to avoid a bad surprise.
If you'd like an outside view, send me your website address: I'll spot the offers Google Ads can read there, the ones that are expired or ambiguous, and tell you in one page what to remove and what to rewrite. It's a natural extension of my work on how machines read your business, and it's built into every site I build: offers written plainly, dated, and easy to remove the day they end.