Set up automated discounts

Benefits

Effective pricing: Leverages advanced Google AI to continuously optimize and display the ideal sale prices for your products consistently across your Shopping ads and your online shop’s product landing page.
Increased performance: Unlock significant lift in (gross) profit, conversions, consumer clicks, and increasing ROI on ad spend.
Ease of use: Get optimized prices continuously, consistently and automatically and save time, effort and cost.

How it works

Automated discounts is an AI-powered solution that helps to effectively maximize (gross) profit performance across your entire inventory.

Google uses AI algorithms to continuously optimize product sale prices based on market signals such as:

Product demand
Price elasticity
Price competitiveness
Seasonality trends
Estimated delivery day
Brand value
Shipping cost

Adjusted sale prices will be shown in Shopping ads (channel-based discounting) and will be passed securely to display the same price on the product landing page in your online store.

Note: Sale price suggestion will no longer be available after successful completion of the Google review.

Eligibility and requirements

Before you decide to participate, check if this feature is a good fit for your business based on the following requirements:

Conversion tracking with cart data. See more implementation details here.
You need to provide [auto_pricing_min_price] and [cost_of_goods_sold] product data attributes for at least 20% of your total inventory impressions. To get you started, you can set:
- [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute to <= 95% of the price currently shown to consumers (current [price] or [sale_price]) and >= [cost_of_goods] (details below).
- [cost_of_goods] must be lower than [auto_pricing_min_price] and between 5% - 95% of the price currently shown to consumers (current [price] or [sale_price])
Your website integration must be able to accept and honor Google-provided product prices from Google-generated JSON web tokens.
Allow Google to show opted-in products to consumers with a performance-based ramp up of initially 10% for 3 days and 90% thereafter.
You're responsible for ensuring that your use of this feature complies with all local laws and regulations that apply to you and your business.

Instructions

Step 1 of 6: Getting started

Step 2 of 6: Set up Conversion with Cart Data (CwCD)

Integration of conversions with cart data (CwCD) allows Google to monitor, evaluate, and optimize performance across your entire inventory and take into account cross-sell and cannibalisation effects. Follow these integration guidelines to set up CwCD. How we are using the information you provide in the CwCD data:

Product price: This value includes the discounted price before tax.
Cost of goods sold: All products that might be included in the cart data need to be uploaded into your product data in the Merchant Center including their cost of goods (cogs) [cost_of_goods_sold] value to ensure that all products in the basket can be taken into account for profit optimization.
Discount: During the pilot, this field is used to collect all additional variable costs, like shipping and transaction costs that are not reflected in the checkout.

Note: We recommend using GA4 for setting up conversions with cart data to enable automated discounts if you use GA4 for conversions in Google Ads. You can also use a primary conversion action in Google Ads to report card data for automated discounts. We currently don't support Floodlight conversion tracking.

After you’ve added cart data to your online store’s conversion tracking, verify that the conversion tag parameters are implemented correctly by completing a test order and following the steps below:

Open the Chrome Developer Tools by clicking the Chrome menu at the top right corner of your Google Chrome web browser, then select “More Tools” and click Developer Tools.
In the "Developer Tools" panel, select "Network".
Submit your test order in the Google Chrome web browser.
Search for the request that contains your conversion (search for “/conversion”). The query string parameters should include the cart parameters, as shown in this example:
- mid = aw_merchant_id
- fcntr = aw_feed_country
- flng = aw_feed_language
- dscnt = discount
- bttype = event type
- item = items (the array) mapping all items with (items.id * items.price * items.quantity)

Step 3 of 6: Submit product attributes to opt-in products

The system delivers the best inventory performance when all products are opted in. However, you are not required to opt-in all products as long as you fulfill minimum opt-in requirement to opt at least as many products to cover >20% of your total inventory impressions. Changes to the product information and the opted-in inventory can be made at any point. If you need more information about the impression coverage of your products, refer to the Performance report in your Merchant Center.

Note: If you have a single MCID account targeting multiple countries of sale, you may opt-in products by adding the [auto_pricing_min_pricing] attribute for the countries of your preference. Performance reporting will show data across all participating markets in aggregate you're not able to filter by a specific country.

How to opt-in products

You can opt-in products by providing valid auto pricing minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] and cost of goods (cogs) [cost_of_goods_sold] attributes for each product to cover at least 20% of your total inventory impressions. You may provide these attributes via multiple data source in your Merchant Center or through the API.

Keep in mind that the maximum price is the regular price provided in your product data and the minimum price is the value you provided in the [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute. Google will optimize the sale price between those 2 limits and change the price at a given time only for those products in your inventory that benefit the overall goal of maximizing profit across your entire inventory; taking cross-sell and cannibalization effects into account.

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 `[price]` attribute. Note: This can generally equal the costs of goods (cogs) `[cost_of_goods_sold]` attribute unless there are special requirements (such as MAP restrictions).
Cost of goods (COGS) `[cost_of_goods_sold]`	String	This is the cost of goods sold (COGS). If accurate data is not readily available, start with your best estimate.

Taxes

COGS don't include tax, however tax must be included in the value for [auto_pricing_min_price].

Opt-out products (optional)

If you want to opt out individual products from Automated discounts, remove the auto pricing minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] attribute for each product or set the value equal to the price of your product.

Note: Don't remove the cost of goods (COGS) [cost_of_goods_sold] attribute for opted-out products. It’s used to compute the total profit if those products appear in your basket.

Step 4 of 6: Complete 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.

For EEA: The prior price will also be passed in the URL if shown on the Shopping ad. You may choose to display the prior price on your online store.

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€, the prior price on Day 22 for Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain would be 80€ and 100€ for all other EEA countries

You can find example URLs for testing in Merchant Center in "Marketing", in the "Automated Discounts" tab under "Update your store's website". Contact automated-discounts-support@google.com in case you need more URLs for testing.

Product landing page of a green candle with the original price crossed out and sale price in red.

Follow these instructions for implementing the price token.

Note:

To help with the URL integration, you can find details on the Google-generated JSON web token structure and the process of consuming the product prices under Token structure
The public key (see below) applies to all automated discount integrations

Token structure

JWT tokens contain two JSON objects: header and payload.

Header

{

"alg": "ES256",

"typ": "JWT"

}

Google-generated token headers have 2 fields:

alg - used algorithm, value is always "ES256"
typ - media type, value is always "JWT"

If the token header contains any other fields, or field values are different than described above, the token must be rejected.

Payload

{ "exp": 1571673600, "o": "tddy123uk", "m": "140301646", "p": 21.99, "pp": 15.00, "c": "USD"
}

Payload has the following fields:

exp - expiration time as Unix time. If the token is expired, it must be rejected.
o - offer ID, used to check if the landing page matches the product or a valid variant. If the landing page doesn't match the product or valid variant, it must be rejected. A valid variant can be a different size of the same shoes.
m - merchant ID. If the merchant ID doesn't match, the token must be rejected.
p - Google Automated Discounts (GAD) price
pp - Prior price *

*For EEA: The prior price will also be passed in the URL if shown on the Shopping ad. You may choose to display the prior price on your online store.
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€, the prior price on Day 22 for Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Spain would be 80€ and 100€ for all other EEA countries
c - currency, upper case

Consuming token

The exact details around consuming the token depend on the used library, but at a high level, there are 3 steps: decoding and signature validation, field validation, and consuming price.

Decoding and signature validation The Base64URL encoded token is passed in pv2 URL request parameter:

http://my.site.com/blacktee?pv2=eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJjIjoiVVNEIiwiZXhwIjoxNTcxNjczNjAwLCJtIjoiMTQwMzAxNjQ2IiwibyI6InRkZHkxMjN1ayIsInAiOjIxLjk5fQ.Qlyr1dQ0vLUJx-iQKwkYE2uLHfYCLVEVGZkAq4fwGTSpMDQCbtzDJr5uGHG8dNKaKV5OlYDxLpW40tQVVe2gkQ

Most of the libraries combine decoding and signature validation to a single function where 'token", "ES256" (algorithm), and "public key" are inputs, and "token_body" is the output:

token_body = decode(token, 'ES256', public_key)

Public key for validation:

The following key is meant to be used by all automated discounts users without expiry.

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----

MFkwEwYHKoZIzj0CAQYIKoZIzj0DAQcDQgAERUlUpxshr67EO66ZTX0Fpog0LEHc nUnlSsIrOfroxTLu2XnigBK/lfYRxzQWq9K6nqsSjjYeea0T12r+y3nvqg==

-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

Field validation

In case the selected library accepts key and algorithm in the previous step and forces their use despite header options, there's no need for additional header checks. Otherwise, the header fields need to be checked according to the guidelines above. For more information, review the JSON Web Token Best Current Practices.

No matter what library is used, the o, m, and p fields must be validated against merchant-side data. If they don't match, then the token must be rejected so that customers can't copy tokens across products and/or merchants. The merchant may check the exp field and reject the token if it's expired, but this isn't mandatory.

Consuming price If all the fields are valid and the token isn't expired, the merchant must use the price provided in the p field.

Note: The price must be displayed for the remainder of the consumer session (at least 30 minutes), including checkout. For items added to the cart, the price needs to be persistent for at least 48 hours.

You can use their existing coupon functionality to discount the price if it fulfills the requirements listed on this page. In particular, the price on the landing page must match the price in the token. Just adding the discount on the checkout page doesn't suffice.

Testing After the integration is completed, it will be tested in 3 steps:

Functional testing (done by merchant)
Key validation (done by merchant with Google-provided token)
Full end-to-end test (done by Google)

Functional testing The easiest way to test during and after development is to generate a temporary key pair. This gives you full control over the tokens. A valid key pair can be generated with this command:

openssl ecparam -genkey -name prime256v1 -noout -out privkey.pem openssl ec -in privkey.pem -pubout -out pubkey.pem

Tokens can be generated with jwt.io or similar tools using ES256 as an algorithm.

Key validation In order to validate that production keys are correctly configured, signed tokens are available in the Merchant Center during on-boardings (sample URLs).

Step 5 of 6: Google review

Step 6 of 6: Set up completion and kickoff

Product activation

After the Google review is successful, sale prices optimized 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.

Note: The sale price optimized by Google Automated Discounts (GAD price) and the prior price are accessible in real-time via Merchant API in the Products sub-API.

Choose a section to give feedback on

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?