Merchant Promotions on Shopping Actions participation criteria and policies

This article provides details about Shopping Actions merchant promotions participation criteria and program policies. To participate, merchants need to be a retailer on Shopping Actions with a Merchant Center account and must have at least one active item in your Merchant Center account. 

Learn more about Merchant Promotions on Shopping Actions 

Participation criteria

To use Merchant Promotions on Shopping Actions, promotions must meet the following criteria:

• Promotions must provide an additional value on top of an item’s display price
• Promotions must follow our editorial guidelines

You can run promotions on Shopping Actions independently of promotions you might run on Shopping ads or your own website. 

Merchant Promotions policy requirements

Supported promotion types:

Merchant Promotions on Shopping Actions currently supports the following structured promotion types. Structured promotions are promotions types that allow you to insert dollar amounts or percentages off into standardized promotions, such as “get X% off” or “Buy x units get $x off”.  

Promotion	Type	Additional info
Discounts	% off discounts	% off on entire order  % off on select items % off on select items with minimum order of $x
	Promo Code	% off with code (auto applies at checkout) $ off with code (auto applies at checkout)
	$ off discounts	$ off on entire order $ off with minimum order of $x  $ off on select items $ off on select items with minimum order of $x
	Quantity discounts (on the same item)	Buy x units get $x off  Buy x units get x% off   Buy x units, get $x off or x+1 item money off  Buy x units, get x% off or x+1 item money off  Buy one get one free

Unsupported promotion types:

Promotion	Type	Additional info
Promotion Bundles	Bundle: save $x when you buy x & y
Free gift or gift card	Gift or gift card with purchase
Free shipping	Free or discounted shipping
Unstructured or combined promotions	Custom or combined promotions	Promotions on Shopping Actions must be structured promotions.
Does not add value	Mail in rebate	Must provide a monetary discount or an additional good or service not normally associated with the purchase
Restrictive	User targeting: new users, existing users, students, store credit card holders... Ex:  10% off for Seniors and Military 5% off with Visa credit card	Must be generally accessible to most shoppers
	Limit per customer

Add value

Promotions must provide a monetary discount or an additional good or service not normally associated with the purchase. All promotions are applied at checkout or point of sale.

Promotions can't be:

• Trade-in offers
• Mail-in or email rebates
• Products and services that are usually free
• Sweepstakes
• Text used to advertise a product without a discount
• Less than $5 or 5% off the current price of an item
• Tax/value added tax (VAT) discounts
• Reflected in the stock keeping unit (SKU) price on the Shopping ads product page or product landing page

Note: Maximum duration of the promotion is limited to 6 months (183 days). You are responsible for ensuring that your promotions comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

Adhere to Shopping Actions policies

Some products or services can't be promoted in Shopping Actions For details, see the Shopping Actions policy restrictions.  Google reserves the right to remove any promotion from your Shopping Actions listing at any time for any reason. 

Adhere to Editorial requirements for titles

Promotion titles should be concise, easy to understand, accurate, and only represent the value of the specific deal being promoted. 

Titles need to:

• Clearly state any minimum thresholds/items needed for deal
• Disclose any redemption requirements
• Clearly state the conditions and any restrictions or limitations of the offer
• Ensure that title text has only one promo applicable to Shopping Actions 

Titles can't:

• Attempt to trick or mislead shoppers

See our Editorial requirements for a list of additional editorial requirements, best practices, and instructions on how to format your promotion's text. To optimize the quality of your promotions, Google may contact your business to request changes based on these guidelines.

Note: Google or its affiliates may modify promotion text to make non-material changes (e.g., size, formatting, punctuation, capitalization and spelling modifications). 

Avoid overly restrictive promotions

Promotions must be generally accessible to all customers. Promotions available only to a subset of shoppers or specific payment methods that are different from the website’s normal payment restrictions are unacceptable. Examples of overly restrictive promotions can include, but are not limited to:

• "$10 off for Teachers & Students"
• "10% off for Seniors and Military”
• “$15 off on your birthday”
• "First time customers"
• “10% Discount with Like”
• "5% off with Visa credit card"
• "10% off when you complete a short survey at check-out

Note: Promotions for discounts on paid memberships are acceptable.

Make promoted products clear to the shopper

Shoppers must be able to redeem promotions for all eligible products. 

If a promotion is limited to specific products, the exclusions (and any other applicable terms and conditions) need to be called out by indicating conditions within the following tag:

fine_print	Optional Syntax String Maximum length is 500 characters.	This attribute is the text of any terms and conditions that apply to the promotion, such as restrictions and exclusions.  The terms and conditions will be shown to the user along with generic_redemption_code.