Merchant Center Promotions 2026: Annotations That Lift Shopping CTR

Two retailers list the same espresso machine at $499. The first shows a plain Shopping card with a price. The second shows a struck-through original price, a sale badge, a free-shipping note and a brand logo. Same bid, same price, and roughly 1.5–2× the click-through rate.

The difference comes from Merchant Center promotions and annotations — free visual elements Google pulls from your feed and account settings. Here is the complete 2026 set, the requirements behind each one, how to configure them, and why they fail to appear.

What annotations are and why they lift performance for free

An annotation is an extra element attached to a product card: a struck-through price, a sale badge, an end date, a shipping note, review stars. You do not pay for them — they neither raise your CPC nor consume budget on their own.

They work through two mechanisms. First, the card occupies more visual space and pulls the eye. Second, several annotations resolve objections before the click (“free delivery”, “sale ends Sunday”), so the clicks you do buy come from higher-intent shoppers. Higher CTR, all else equal, also improves your position in the auction.

Annotations are the only way to change how a Shopping ad looks. Unlike text ads, the title and description come from the feed — you cannot “rewrite the creative”. Product data and promotions are the entire creative lever you have.

The full 2026 annotation set

Annotation	What it shows	Source
Sale price	Struck-through original price next to the new one	price + sale_price feed attributes
Price drop	Badge marking a reduction against historical price	Automatic, from Merchant Center price history
Merchant promotion	“Special offer” tag with offer text and optional code	Promotions section in Merchant Center
Deal ends	When the offer expires	Promotion dates; expanded testing in 2026
Shipping	“Free delivery”, delivery speed	Shipping settings and the shipping attribute
Product rating	Stars and review count	Product Ratings programme, review feed
Business logo	Brand logo on the product card	Brand assets in Merchant Center; expanded in 2026
Returns	Return policy summary	Return policy in account settings

Sale price: the struck-through original

The most visible and most underused annotation. Technically it is two feed attributes: price for the base price and sale_price for the discounted one, plus optional sale_price_effective_date defining the window.

For the strikethrough to appear, Google checks several conditions (treat the specifics as guidance and confirm current thresholds in Merchant Center Help before a big season):

• the base price must be genuine — the item has to have sold at that price for a meaningful stretch of the preceding period, not since yesterday afternoon;
• the discount has to land inside a sensible band: too small and it will not render, too large and it reads as a data error and gets filtered;
• the feed price must match the landing page exactly, including currency and, where applicable, tax-inclusive pricing.

The classic failure is a manufactured baseline — raising price so the discount looks bigger. Google compares against price history, simply withholds the annotation, and in worse cases disapproves the item. Diagnosing that class of problem is covered in product disapprovals and feed diagnostics.

Merchant Center promotions: codes and special offers

Merchant Promotions are a separate object, unrelated to feed pricing. They render as a “Special offer” tag that expands into the offer terms and, if you use one, a promo code.

Available types:

• percentage off the order;
• fixed amount off;
• free or upgraded shipping;
• free gift with purchase;
• buy X get Y.

Set them up at Merchant Center → Growth / Marketing → Promotions → Create promotion. You define the title (this is the text shoppers read), the type, the active window, an optional code, and the scope — all products or a subset by ID, brand or category.

What matters in practice:

1. Review takes time. Build in several business days before the sale opens, or your promotion goes live halfway through it.
2. The promotion title is the offer, not a campaign name. “20% off all appliances through 30 September” works; “Autumn Sale 2026” tells the shopper nothing.
3. On-site terms must match the text. If the code fails at checkout or carries an unstated minimum order, the promotion gets pulled.
4. A product can have several promotions, but only one renders — whichever the system judges most relevant. Stacking overlapping offers buys you nothing.

New in 2026: promotions gained a dedicated section for tying an offer to an event — a sale, a holiday, a seasonal peak. That simplifies calendar planning; instead of duplicating promotions by hand, you describe the event and attach a set of offers to it.

Deal ends: urgency as an annotation

Worth calling out separately is the end-date annotation, drawn from your promotion dates, telling the shopper the offer is finite. In 2026 the format is in expanded testing — not every account, not every market.

The practical conclusion is simple: set real end dates on promotions even when the offer feels open-ended. An offer with no end forfeits a potential annotation, and urgency is one of the few honest conversion levers that costs you no margin.

Product data that gates what renders

Short title

The short title attribute is used wherever the full title does not fit — compact formats and Performance Max included. Leave it empty and the system truncates your long title itself, rarely at a sensible point.

Working formula: full title as “brand + model + key spec + variant”, short title as “brand + model”. Title construction logic is covered in the guide to Google Shopping product feeds.

Images

Minimum image requirements are tightening: a 500×500 pixel floor has been announced, taking effect 31 January 2027. Auditing and reshooting the catalogue now is cheaper than doing it in a panic next December.

Brand logo

Business logos in Shopping ads expanded to more surfaces in 2026. They are uploaded under brand assets in Merchant Center. Requirements are conventional: square or horizontal, transparent or white background, legible at small sizes.

Product reviews

Star ratings come through the Product Ratings programme — either your own review feed or an integration with a review platform. Display requires a minimum accumulated review count per product or variant group. It is the slowest annotation to switch on and the one that moves trust most in high-consideration categories.

Eight reasons an annotation does not appear

1. The promotion is still in review or was rejected. Check status in the Promotions section, not in Google Ads.
2. Feed price and landing page price differ. Even a cent-level mismatch blocks rendering.
3. Insufficient base price history. A discount from a price that appeared yesterday earns no strikethrough.
4. Discount too small or implausibly large. Both ends of the range get filtered out.
5. Promotion applied to the wrong products. The ID or brand filter does not match actual feed values.
6. The product is disapproved or limited. Items with issues do not carry annotations.
7. The format cannot fit it. Narrow surfaces show a subset of eligible annotations, not all of them.
8. Country mismatch. Promotions target a specific market; a campaign serving a neighbouring country will not pick them up.

Annotations also run in free listings

Promotions and sale prices surface not only in paid Shopping ads but in free product listings too — the Shopping tab and product blocks in organic results. That changes the economics of feed work: one configured promotion pays off in two channels, and for merchants with a clean catalogue free listing volume is already comparable to paid.

Practical implication: even with Shopping campaigns paused, keeping the feed and promotions healthy is worth the effort. A paused campaign does not switch off free listings — but disapproved products do.

Automation: feed rules instead of manual edits

Setting sale_price by hand across a thousand SKUs before every sale guarantees mistakes. Two ways to automate it.

Feed rules in Merchant Center

Rules calculate an attribute from other fields — take price, multiply by 0.8 where the item sits in a given category or carries a specific label. They live in the feed management section. After editing a rule, always run a test process and inspect the value preview before publishing.

Supplemental feeds

A supplemental feed is a separate sheet layered onto the primary feed by product ID. It is the ideal promotion tool: build a sheet with id, sale_price and sale_price_effective_date, upload it for the sale window, disable it afterwards. The primary feed is never touched, so there is nothing to break.

The same technique covers short titles, custom labels and any attribute that changes on a schedule. Structuring a feed so these layers do not conflict is covered in Google Shopping product feeds.

A quarterly promotion calendar

Ad-hoc promotions launched “when someone remembered” underperform a planned calendar, because review and price history both need lead time. A working schedule:

1. Four weeks out. Lock the list of hero products and their base prices. From this point price stays untouched so the history needed for sale price accumulates.
2. Two weeks out. Create promotions with exact dates and submit them for review. Verify the copy matches what the site will actually do.
3. One week out. Upload the supplemental feed with sale_price and effective dates. Check card previews and item statuses.
4. Two days out. Re-model budgets for the expected demand and arm an overspend rule.
5. During the sale. Check disapprovals and promotion status daily — review is stricter during peaks and rejections are more frequent.
6. After it ends. Disable the supplemental feed, close promotions, and snapshot the metrics for comparison against the next peak.

How to measure the effect

There is no native “CTR with annotation vs without” report, so measurement is indirect:

• Before/after on a product group. Compare a matched period before and after enabling a promotion, looking at CTR and conversion rate. Crude — seasonality and bid changes contaminate it.
• Catalogue split. Enable the promotion on half the products, matched by price band and category. Cleaner, but demands discipline in how you split.
• Geo split. The most defensible option when volume allows. How to run and read such tests honestly: incrementality and geo experiments.

Watch Shopping impression share alongside CTR — a genuine CTR lift usually pulls impression share up with it. Reading those metrics together is covered in impression share and auction insights.

Promotion copy: six before-and-after examples

The promotion title is the one line you fully control, and it is usually written last, in a hurry. The wording matters because shoppers read it at the exact moment they are comparing several cards.

Weak	Better	Why
Autumn Sale	20% off all appliances through 30 September	States the size of the benefit and a deadline
Special Offer	Second item half price	Explains the mechanism, not just that an offer exists
Up to 70% off	15% off espresso machines with code BREW15	“Up to” reads as a bait; a specific number does not
Free shipping	Free shipping on orders over $50	The condition surfaces at checkout anyway — say it upfront
Free gift with purchase	Free capsule bundle with any espresso machine	The shopper knows what they actually get
Clearance	30% off last season’s models through Sunday	Explains why it is cheap, defusing quality suspicion

The general rule: the line should carry a benefit, an object and a deadline. If only two fit, drop the deadline — the end-date annotation partly covers it.

When a competitor runs a discount and you do not

The instinct is to match it. Before cutting margin, check three things.

1. Are you actually losing? Open auction insights for Shopping: if your impression share and outranking share have not moved, the competitor’s discount is not working and there is nothing to answer.
2. Are there non-price annotations you are not using? Free shipping, ratings, a logo, return terms — they occupy the same visual real estate as a discount and cost no margin.
3. Has the problem moved elsewhere? Conversion rate falling at flat CTR is not a card problem; it is landing page, stock availability or delivery times.

If a discount is genuinely warranted, size it from your economics rather than from the competitor’s number: the maximum defensible discount is the one where incremental volume covers the margin you give up. Formulas in unit economics and LTV for media buying.

Pre-peak checklist

• Promotions created and submitted for review several business days before the sale starts.
• Promotion text reads as an offer and matches on-site terms exactly.
• Every promotion carries real start and end dates.
• sale_price and sale_price_effective_date are populated, and the base price was not inflated.
• Feed prices match the site to the cent, currency included.
• Images audited against the coming 500×500 floor.
• Short titles set for products running in Performance Max.
• Brand logo uploaded to Merchant Center assets.
• No disapproved items in the catalogue’s core categories.
• Budgets re-modelled for the peak — the monthly cap mechanics are in Google Ads budget pacing.
• Location settings verified: an offer valid in one country should not surface in the next one — see presence vs presence-or-interest targeting.

The wider peak-season picture

Annotations are one piece of seasonal readiness alongside feed hygiene, budgets, bids, landing pages and stock. The full sequence, including a calendar and contingency plans for an overheated auction, sits in the promo peaks and Black Friday playbook.

If Shopping is a new channel for you and you would rather skip the standard feed and structure mistakes, Google Ads training and the Google Ads guide are both built around live accounts rather than interface theory.

FAQ

What are Shopping ad annotations?

Extra card elements: struck-through pricing, sale badges, offer end dates, free shipping notes, star ratings, brand logos. They are generated from feed data and Merchant Center settings and carry no separate cost.

Do annotations change my cost per click?

Not directly. Indirectly they help: a higher CTR improves auction position at the same bid.

How is a promotion different from sale price?

Sale price is a discounted price inside the feed and produces the strikethrough. A promotion is a separate offer with text and an optional code, rendered as a “Special offer” tag. You can run both at once.

Why is my struck-through price not showing?

Usually the base price lacks sufficient history, the discount falls outside the accepted band, or feed and landing page prices disagree.

How long does promotion review take?

Typically a few business days. It is not guaranteed, which is why sale promotions get created ahead of time rather than on launch day.

Can one product carry several promotions?

Yes, but only one renders — whichever the system considers most relevant. Stacking overlapping offers is wasted effort.

Is a promo code required?

No. The discount can apply automatically at checkout, in which case you leave the code blank. What matters is that on-site behaviour matches the promotion text.

How do I get star ratings?

Through the Product Ratings programme: submit your own review feed or connect a review platform. Stars appear once you pass the minimum review count.

What is the 500×500 image requirement?

An announced increase of the minimum product image size to 500×500 pixels, effective 31 January 2027. Audit the catalogue early — bulk reshoots under deadline always cost more.

Why does short title matter?

It is used wherever the full title will not fit, Performance Max included. Without it the system truncates automatically, usually at an unhelpful point.

How do I prove annotations worked?

No native report exists. Compare CTR and conversion rate by product group before and after, and where volume allows, split the catalogue or geography into test and control.

Do annotations work in Performance Max?

Yes — the retail side of PMax uses the same feed data and Merchant Center promotions. Reporting is thinner than in classic Shopping, so effect testing has to happen at product-group level.

Annotations are the rare CTR lift that costs nothing but housekeeping: a clean feed and promotions created on time. Start with two things — confirm feed prices match your site to the cent, and build your next promotion several days before the sale, not on the morning of it.