The automated discounts feature allows you to discount your product prices effectively based on multiple real-time signals and show a discounted price on Shopping ads and on your website.
On this page
- Benefits
- Eligibility and requirements
- Instructions for merchants
- Launch schedule
- Performance reporting
Benefits
Automated discounts allow you to effectively price products in Shopping ads on Google. Our goal is to help you drive more conversions and profit.
- Customise pricing: Find the optimum product discount across Shopping ads and your site's product landing pages with the help of Google's high-scale models.
- Save time: Automated, real-time price optimisation saves time, effort and cost.
Eligibility and requirements
Your account can have multiple participating Merchant Center IDs, but each must separately fulfil this requirement.
- Key event tracking and feed configuration setup.
- Merchant systems must be able to accept and honour Google-provided product prices from the URL.
Instructions for merchants
When you sign up for automated discounts, you can choose a channel partner that can help you with setup. Here are the channel partners that you can choose from:
- For Shopify merchants: Simprosys, WoolyTech
- For WooCommerce merchants: SweetCode
- For Magento 2 merchants: Amasty, WeltPixel
- For Shopware 6 merchants: AdValue
Step 1 of 6: Getting started
- Navigate to the 'Automated discounts' tab under Marketing. If you do not see the tab, you need to activate automated discounts in the 'Add-ons' section under Settings and tools.
- Select if you are using a shop builder and choose your preferred currency for performance reporting
- Once you've saved your basic information, you are ready to continue with the next steps of the setup
Step 2 of 6: Set up conversion reporting with basket data
Step 3 of 6: Opt in products using feeds
Opt in products
To complete this step, provide the minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] and product-level cost of goods (COGS) [cost_of_goods_sold] attributes in your feed for the products that you want to include. Remember that the maximum price must be the regular price attribute already provided in your product feeds. Google won't go higher than this price.
To opt in products, add these two additional attributes to the feed:
| Required attributes | Value type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] | String |
This is the minimum price. Indicate the minimum below which you don't want the discount to be applied. Follow the same formatting rules as for the price Note: This can generally equal the cost of goods sold (COGS) |
cost of goods sold (COGS) [cost_of_goods_sold] |
String | This is the cost of goods sold (COGS). If accurate information isn't available, provide the best estimation. |
Opt out products (optional)
If you want to opt out individual products from automated discounts, remove the minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute for each product.
[cost_of_goods_sold] attribute for opted-out products. It's still used to compute the total profit from reported baskets.We recommend opting in at least 50% of offers in order to reach the highest gains.
Step 4 of 6: URL integration
You are required to display the Google-recommended price for opted-in products as the new sale price on your website.
The current sale price will be passed in the URL.
The prior price represents the lowest price displayed to users on Google in the past 30 days in the following countries: Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain.
For all other EEA countries, the prior price represents the lowest price displayed to users on Google in the past 30 days, except where there is an application of consecutive price reductions (e.g. 10% off, then 20% off, then 50% off) within the past 60 days. In that case, the prior price will be the price that was applied before the first price reduction.
Example: Consider the product price changes, e.g. Day 1: €100, Day 7: €90, Day 14: €80, Day 21: €70, then the prior price on Day 22 for Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain would be €80, while it would be €100 for all other EEA countries
Your channel partner will guide you through this process.
Step 5 of 6: Google review
Once the previous setup steps have been completed, you will be able to request a Google review by clicking 'Request verification' to validate the integration and the consumer experience. Expect the Google review to take two to three working days to complete.
Any open issues will be displayed on the 'Automated discounts' tab. Allow up to 24 hours for updates to be reflected on Merchant Center for changes that you've made. Once you've resolved all issues, you can request another Google review.
Step 6 of 6: Kick-off
After Google reviews and approves your account, a performance-based ramp-up will be kicked off automatically for your opted-in products. You will now be able to monitor your performance in the 'Automated discounts' tab, as well as pause and activate the generation of optimised sale prices with one click.
Product activation
After the Google review has been successful, sale prices optimised by automated discounts will start showing on your Shopping ads for opted-in products for 90% of customers. Note that products will only be discounted if it benefits the overall goal of maximising profit across your entire inventory.
You can use the 'Pause' and 'Activate' buttons at any time if you want to pause or activate automated discounts.
Performance reporting
Navigate to the 'Automated discounts' tab under Marketing to monitor all performance metrics. Your set of performance metrics, including incremental gross profit, revenue and clicks, will appear on your scorecards for the selected time period. Metrics are updated daily. Learn more about available metrics and about automated discounts in Merchant Center.
The sale price optimised by Google automated discounts (GAD price) and the prior price are accessible in real time via the Merchant API in the Products sub-API.