Google AI Mode now shows Merchant Center promotions as offer badges in Shopping ads, so BFCM promotions should be submitted by about November 20. The bigger job is auditing the Google and Shopify defaults switched on since August, starting with automated promotions.
The most important decisions in your Google account this quarter are not the ones you made. They are the defaults you did not notice being made for you.
On October 12, Google began showing promotional offer badges inside Shopping ads in AI Mode, its conversational search experience. A shopper who asks AI Mode for the best deal on a category can now see a badge like a dollar-off or buy-more-save-more offer next to your product, before they ever reach your store. According to Common Thread Collective’s breakdown of the AI Mode offer update, brands with approved Merchant Center promotions get the badge automatically, and brands without them do not appear in that format at all.
That is the deadline story, and it is real. The same day, Google also switched on a second feature, automated promotions, which reads offers from your website and attaches them to eligible ads unless you opt out. CTC writes each of these changes up as its own task, and does it well. What I think merchants are missing is the pattern behind them. By my count from CTC’s running log and Shopify’s changelog, this is at least the seventh setting since mid-August that turned on for merchants without them choosing it. Each one shifts a little control over your offer, your data, or your ad copy to the platform.
Our guide to agentic commerce and BFCM 2026 argued that most of your holiday plan should stay exactly as it was. I still think that. This piece is about the small part that should change: knowing which switches are on before the biggest traffic week of your year runs through them.
On October 12, 2026, Google AI Mode started showing promotional offer badges on Shopping ads for brands with active, approved Merchant Center promotions. The badge appears alongside the product image, price, and reviews inside AI Mode’s answer, and a shopper who taps it sees the full offer before visiting the product page. No separate campaign or budget is needed; standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns connected to an approved Merchant Center account are eligible.
Why it matters for BFCM is visibility, not just conversion. AI Mode shows far fewer products than the traditional results page. CTC’s tracker cites research from September finding AI Mode surfaced about 3.9 products per query against 27.8 in standard search, with only 1.28% overlap between the two on the same day. I have not seen the underlying study, so I would hold the exact figures loosely, but the shape is consistent with what our earlier comparison of Google AI Mode and ChatGPT Shopping found: fewer slots, decided more by data quality than by bid. When the shelf is that short, a visible offer is one of the few ways to stand out on it.
Promotions are also only as good as the feed underneath them. AI Mode matches products to conversational queries using your titles, descriptions, and attributes. If your feed has not had a hard look this year, our walkthrough of rewriting an 11,700-product Google Shopping feed shows what that work looks like, and the title fixes in it matter more for AI Mode than any badge.
Submit every BFCM promotion to Merchant Center by about November 20, a full week before Black Friday on November 27. CTC recommends November 25 as the latest date, based on Google’s typical 24 to 72 hour review window, but that leaves no room for a disapproval. One rejected promotion and a resubmission can eat the whole buffer, and a promotion that is not approved does not show anywhere, including AI Mode.
Disapprovals are common for predictable reasons, according to CTC’s summary of Google’s requirements. The promotion must work at checkout exactly as described, because Google tests it against a real cart. Titles must be specific, so a vague line like “save big this season” is rejected. Each promotion needs a clear offer type, such as a percentage off, an amount off, buy one get one, or free shipping, and runs for at most six months. For Performance Max, attach promotion assets in Google Ads at the campaign or asset group level as well as in Merchant Center, because Merchant Center alone does not cover every placement.
Run a test order with each code before you submit it. Our piece on Merchant Center policy compliance covers why a mismatch between your site and your feed is the fastest route to account trouble, and a broken promotion is exactly that kind of mismatch. If you run early access deals before Black Friday, work backwards from the first day the offer goes live, not from November 27.
Automated promotions deserve a look before November because they can put an offer in your ads that you never chose to advertise. Starting October 12, Google Ads began scanning advertiser landing pages for discounts and attaching them as promotion assets to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns. PPC Land’s report on the October 12 rollout notes that enrollment is automatic and the opt-out sits in account level automated asset settings.
The scope is narrower than the headlines suggest. According to CTC’s write-up of Google’s auto-apply promotions change, it applies to campaigns with linked location assets, such as a connected Google Business Profile, that do not already have a manually added promotion asset. Plenty of online brands linked a Business Profile once, for local inventory ads or a pop-up, and forgot about it. Those brands are in scope.
The risk is on your website, not in your ad account. An expired code still sitting on an old landing page, a welcome offer meant only for new subscribers, or a code created for one influencer can all be read and served broadly. Merchant Center has a separate, older version of the same idea, currently a limited beta in a few countries including the US, an automated promotions data source that extracts offers from product pages into free listings and Shopping ads, with its own opt-out under the Promotions tab. Check both. If you want control, the cleanest fix is to add your own promotion assets, which also removes those campaigns from automated scope.
At least seven Google and Shopify settings that affect a merchant’s ads, data, or checkout switched on by default between mid-August and October 12, 2026. None of them is harmful on its own, and several are probably good for most stores. The problem is that each was a decision made on your behalf, and the busiest week of the year is a bad time to discover one.
The Google rows come from CTC’s running log of every Google Ads change in 2026, which links each change to its own breakdown. The Shopify row comes from Search Engine Journal’s report on Shopify’s AI channel auto-enrollment: when Meta was added as an agentic channel on September 8, eligible stores’ products were shared with it by default, because the default setting enrolls stores in new AI channels as they launch. That setting lives under Sales channels, then Agentic, behind a toggle called Allow Shopify to manage for me.
I am not arguing that any of these should be switched off by reflex. Local inventory ads and AI channel access may well help you. My argument is about the habit. A merchant who audits settings once a year is now running on a dozen decisions they did not make. Will this matter in 18 months? I think yes, because defaults are increasingly where platforms decide how much of your economics they hold, and the merchants who keep a short list of what is on, and why, will keep more of that control.
The following is a composite built from patterns I have seen in Shopify merchant conversations, not a real store, and it contains no observed results. Picture a home goods brand doing about $1.5M a year. It runs Performance Max and a standard Shopping campaign, linked its Google Business Profile two years ago for a holiday pop-up, keeps a 15% welcome code in its site footer, and plans a 25% sitewide Black Friday offer.
Here is the audit I would run, and the call on each item. Automated promotions: this store is in scope because of the old Business Profile link and has no manual promotion assets, so Google could attach the footer’s 15% code to ads during the same week the store is running 25% off. I would switch automated promotions off in Google Ads, end any matching automated promotions in Merchant Center, and build the Black Friday offer as a manual promotion, submitted by November 20. Local inventory ads: the pop-up is gone, so I would apply inventory filters to keep local inventory out of the Shopping campaign. Deal ends badges: there is no switch for these, so I would make sure the sale price dates in the feed match the real sale, because a countdown that is accurate is a fair nudge. AI Max: I would run the text customization preview Google now offers and switch off generated copy on any campaign where it reads off-brand.
The Shopify AI channel setting is the one I would think hardest about. Sharing products with AI channels costs this store nothing in fees, according to Shopify’s help pages as reported by Search Engine Journal, and opting out of a channel may reduce visibility there. I would leave catalog access on, but turn off automatic enrollment in future channels, so the next new channel is a decision rather than a surprise. A reasonable merchant could make the opposite call; the point is to make it.
Total time: about 30 minutes for the settings, plus a couple of hours to build and test the manual promotions. The largest saving is not money. It is not having to explain to customers on Black Friday why an ad promised a different discount from the one on the site.
The audit gets longer as spend grows, but the first three checks are the same at every stage: automated promotions, manual BFCM promotions submitted early, and a test order for each code.
If you are around $500K and spend modestly on Google, stop there. Check whether your campaigns have location assets, switch automated promotions off if they do and you have codes on your site you would not advertise, and submit one clean Black Friday promotion. Our look at unique discount codes is worth reading before you decide how many codes to have live at once, because every extra public code is one more thing Google can find.
If you are between $1M and $5M, add the full seven-row audit above, and annotate your reporting with the dates in the table, because several of these changes alter reported numbers without changing real performance. Our pre-Q4 marketing audit before scaling holiday ad spend pairs well with this one.
If you are above $5M with an agency, ask them for a written list of every automated asset and default currently on in your accounts, with an owner for each. If they can produce it in a day, you are in good hands. If they cannot, that is the conversation to have before November, not after.
Your promotions show in Google AI Mode when they are set up and approved in Google Merchant Center and connected to eligible Shopping or Performance Max campaigns. Since October 12, 2026, AI Mode displays offer badges for brands with active, approved Merchant Center promotions, with no separate campaign needed. Make sure each promotion works at checkout exactly as described, uses a specific title, and has a clear offer type such as percentage off or free shipping. For Performance Max, also attach promotion assets in Google Ads. A promotion that is pending or disapproved will not appear in AI Mode or anywhere else.
Submit Black Friday promotions to Google Merchant Center by about November 20, 2026, a full week before Black Friday on November 27. Google’s review usually takes 24 to 72 hours, and some agencies cite November 25 as the last safe date, but that leaves no time to fix a disapproval and resubmit. If you run early access or week-long deals, work backwards from the first day the offer goes live instead. Test every promo code with a real order before submitting, because promotions that fail Google’s checkout validation are disapproved and lose their visibility across Shopping ads and AI Mode.
Turn off automated promotions in Google Ads through the account level automated assets settings, where you set the automated promotions option to off. The feature, active since October 12, 2026, reads offers from your landing pages and attaches them to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns that have location assets and no manual promotion assets. Google Merchant Center has a separate automated promotions data source for free listings and Shopping ads, with its own opt-out under the Promotions tab, so check both. Adding your own manual promotion assets is another way to keep control, since it removes those campaigns from automated scope.
Yes, by default eligible Shopify stores share products with AI shopping channels and are enrolled in new channels as they launch. Most channels read products through Shopify Catalog, while Google reads them from Merchant Center. Search Engine Journal reported that when Meta was added as an agentic channel on September 8, 2026, eligible stores were shared with it automatically. You can review this under Sales channels, then Agentic, by turning off the setting called Allow Shopify to manage for me and choosing each channel yourself. Many merchants will reasonably keep catalog access on and turn off automatic enrollment in future channels, so each new channel becomes a deliberate decision rather than a surprise.
Before BFCM, check the Google Ads defaults that change your offers, copy, or reported numbers: automated promotions, AI Max text customization on upgraded Search campaigns, AI text overlays on Demand Gen videos, local inventory ads in Shopping campaigns, deal ends countdown badges driven by your feed’s sale dates, and automatic customer list labels used by Smart Bidding. Most switched on between mid-August and mid-October 2026. You do not need to turn them all off. Decide which ones fit your plan and switch off the rest where a switch exists (deal ends badges have none, so keep your feed’s sale dates accurate), and note each change date in your reporting so a shifted metric is not mistaken for a real performance change.
