Google Ads Automated Promotions: What Changes, and Should You Turn Them Off?

A thin strip runs across the top of the site: a discount on the first order through the app. It went up for Ramadan and nobody took it down. Now Google may carry it into your search ad, in front of someone looking for your nearest branch, without anyone on your team adding it.

That is what Google Ads Automated promotions do. The job on your side is small: open the setting, look at the offers visible on your site and decide. If the site carries a conditional or expired offer, turn the feature off.

What did Google announce about Automated promotions?

Automated promotions is an account-level automated asset in Google Ads. Google looks for offers on your landing pages and attaches them to eligible campaigns as promotion assets. Google's own example is a landing page offering 20% off black sweaters, picked up and shown in search results. The Help page says the feature "highlights valid, high-quality deals and offers directly within your ads".

Eligibility is narrow: an active Search or Performance Max campaign with location assets attached (the assets that tie a campaign to your branch locations), no manual promotion running, and compliance with Google Ads policies.

None of that carries a date on Google's three Help pages. The 12 October 2026 date comes from an email Google sent to some advertisers, which Search Engine Roundtable published as a screenshot on 5 October 2026: "Starting October 12, 2026, Google Ads will automatically identify and extract high-quality promotions".

How do Automated promotions pick offers from your website, and what is still unknown?

Each automated promotion can serve for under 24 hours and may then be re-enabled if Google's systems verify the offer is still visibly on the site. Google expects this to change once it can extract start and end dates. My reading: the system asks your page whether the offer is live. It never asks anyone in your company.

Control is tighter than you'd expect. The Help page documents no way to remove a single automated promotion. You have the account-level switch, or a manual promotion with your own start and end dates, which makes that campaign ineligible while it runs. Google's Performance Max page adds that campaigns default to the account-level setting and that you can override it per campaign, but it gives no steps and doesn't say whether that covers Automated promotions. Look for it in your campaign settings; don't count on it.

Here is what Google hasn't said, and I won't guess:

• Whether Arabic pages are read, and which countries are covered.
• Google says it "validates" offers, but not how: what counts as "high-quality", or how conditional, expired or disputed offers are handled.
• What "other sources" means: the Performance Max page says deals come "from your website and other sources".
• Whether every eligible account is enrolled, or only those emailed.
• Whether an account switched off today stays off after 12 October.
• Whether the per-campaign override on the Performance Max page applies to Automated promotions, and where it sits.

Who is affected in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf?

Automated promotions touch anyone advertising on Search or Performance Max with location assets: retailers with branches, clinics, restaurants, showrooms. Google publishes no country list, so I can't say Riyadh or Amman is covered.

The most exposed business is the one whose offers carry conditions. First order only. App only. A price for one branch or one city. A minimum basket. A WhatsApp coupon code that ended up on a page. Add banners that outlive their season: Ramadan, Saudi National Day in September, White Friday (the region's late-November sales).

Conditions matter because these campaigns carry location assets, so the ad points people toward a branch. A hypothetical example: a clinic in Jeddah offers a first-session discount at one branch only. If the ad shows it without the condition, the receptionist at the other branch pays for it, not the campaign manager.

Leave it on, turn it off, or run a manual promotion? A decision table

If two rows fit, take the stricter.

Offers on your site	Decision	Why
Your campaigns have no location assets	Confirm first: in Assets, filter Asset type to Location. If the list is empty, do nothing for now	Outside the scope Google states
No offers on the site	Leave as is; check Assets a few times in the first week	Nothing to pick up; "other sources" is undefined
One clear, current, unconditional offer valid in every branch	On, or a manual promotion if you know the end date	A manual promotion carries your dates. Add it at account level so it covers every campaign, and take the banner down the day the offer ends: once the manual promotion stops, the campaign is eligible again
Conditional offer: first order, app only, one branch, minimum basket	Off, then a manual promotion if you want it in the ad (check that your language and currency are offered when you create it)	Google doesn't say how conditions are handled
Expired seasonal banner still on the site	Remove it today; Off until the site is clean	While visible, it may be treated as live
Several people publish offers with no review	Off	You can't vouch for what gets posted tomorrow

Where the switch is

1. From the Campaigns menu, open Assets.
2. In the filter bar, click the three-dot (More) menu and choose Account level automated assets.
3. On the page that opens, click the three-dot menu again and choose Advanced settings.
4. Open the Automated promotions drop-down, choose Off, give a reason if prompted and click Save. The opt-in option is labeled "On (recommended)".

The setting is per account. If you manage several accounts under a manager account, repeat it in each one.

What can you ignore?

A pure online store with no location assets can ignore Automated promotions as currently scoped; nothing in Performance Max for online stores changes. Check it, don't assume it: a linked Business Profile or Google's automated location assets can attach locations nobody on your team added.

Merchant Center promotions are a separate product, and the Help page doesn't mention them.

Don't pause your campaigns: this is an account setting, and stopping a campaign that sells costs more than the risk it removes. Manual promotion assets work as before.

Why decide the offer before the ad?

My view: Automated promotions solve Google's problem, not yours. As I read it, Google wants a richer ad, which is fair enough. But an offer is a commercial decision: who gets it, on what condition, until when, and what margin is left. It shouldn't reach an ad because a banner was left on a page.

I work along one full path: market, offer, ad, lead, follow-up, sale, revenue. The offer sits before the ad on purpose. At Argan Package in Saudi Arabia, a campaign for slow-moving products was built from sales and warehouse data, and sales rose 400% in 7 days, from my campaign records. In clearing slow stock there, the discount was 50% on only part of the products; other products moved by explaining product results more clearly and changing the target audience completely. How to build an offer is in the offer design article.

Turning it off isn't free: you give up an extra line in the ad. If your offer is clean and your team disciplined about what it publishes, let it run. But if click-through rate climbs and people reach the branch asking for a discount you never meant to give, the report got better and revenue didn't.

What to do next: a four-step check

1. Open the setting by the path above and note its state today. Don't wait for 12 October.
2. Go through the site, not just the ad landing pages: top strip, home page, pop-ups, offers page. Remove every expired offer and note every conditional one.
3. Pick your row in the table and act.
4. After the date in Google's email, open the setting again and confirm it still reads what you chose. Then check Assets a few times in the first week: filter to Promotion, read the Added by column and hover over Google AI to see where the offer was taken from.

If other settings are running that nobody chose, start with the Google Ads audit checklist. If you want a second pair of eyes, that is what my Google Ads account audit is for.