What are Google Ads price extensions and promotion extensions?

Google says price assets “appear below your text ad on desktop and mobile,” as “a set of up to 8 cards.” Each card is one item: a header, a description, a price and a final URL. Someone who selects an item goes straight to that item’s page, so a price asset is a set of links as much as a list of prices.

Google’s own example is a hair salon. A campaign on general keywords lists Haircut, Hair Coloring and Treatments. An ad group about hair color lists Partial Color, Full Color, Full Color + Conditioning and Semi-permanent Gloss. Its advice is to match how specific your keywords are: someone searching for luxury sheets wants the range of sheets and the price of each kind, and probably nothing about towels or rugs.

Google’s steps ask for at least 3 items and recommend 5 or more, and its API reference stops at 8. Every item needs a final URL, and Google says you don’t need a different one for each row if you have only one page. On a narrow phone a header or a description can be shortened, an item can show with no description, and a price can be rounded: Google’s example is $12,345.67 shown as $12.4K.

A price can carry a qualifier, which Google’s API reference lists as From, Up to or Average, and a unit: per hour, day, week, month, year or night. In that reference the whole asset shares one qualifier, and each item has its own unit.

The languages are English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. The character limits guide has the limit for every other field of a Search ad.

You pick one type for the whole asset, and the type decides what a header and a description may hold. Google gives an example for each:

Read those for what belongs under a type, and not for length: 6 of the 9 example descriptions run past the 25 characters Google’s own steps allow.

A promotion shows below your ad as up to 2 lines of text about one offer, and a click on it opens the offer’s page. Google’s page puts promotions on Search ads, at the top and the bottom of the results, and on Shorts and in-stream video ads on YouTube.

What you enter, in the order Google’s steps ask for it:

• Occasion, optional. One from Google’s list, such as Back-to-school or Mother’s Day. It shows as a bold label beside the offer, and its dates are when the promotion may show.
• Promotion type. A monetary discount or a percentage discount. Google’s API reference adds one modifier, Up to.
• Item. The name of the product or service on offer.
• Final URL. The page the offer opens.
• Promotional details. What the offer asks of the buyer: a promo code, or an order over an amount. The API reference takes one or the other.
• Promotion dates, optional. The dates to show on the ad.
• Advanced options. When the promotion is eligible to show: a start and an end date, and days and hours.

So a promotion carries two pairs of dates, and Google’s API reference has both: the days the promotion can be redeemed, and the first and last day the asset serves.

Google lists 35 occasions in its main table. 22 have dates, the first and last day a promotion under that occasion can show. You can narrow them in Advanced options, and you can’t pick a day outside them. For other dates, leave the occasion out and set a start and an end date yourself.

The other 13 take any dates: Back to school, Mother’s day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, National Day, End of Season, Winter Sale, Summer Sale, Fall Sale, Spring Sale, Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr and Eid Al Adha. Google marks Labor Day as unavailable in Dutch, Norwegian, Hebrew and Japanese, and Halloween in Malay, Polish and Hebrew.

Two rules decide whether an occasion’s promotion serves:

• An occasion comes first. Where a promotion with an occasion and one without sit at the same level, Google says the one with the occasion “will be preferred.”
• Six months. A promotion for an occasion has to be created or edited within 6 months of its start date to serve. One that hasn’t been modified for 6 months stops serving, so last year’s Black Friday promotion needs an edit before this year’s.

The help pages and the API reference read for this guide give no character limit for a promotion’s item or its promo code. Google also describes automated promotions, a feature of its own AI that finds deals on your website and other sources, and serves them in Search and Performance Max campaigns that use location assets.

A price asset:

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Assets › Assets, select the plus button, then Price.
2. 02In Add to, choose the account, a campaign or an ad group.
3. 03Enter the language, the type, the currency and the price qualifier.
4. 04For each item, fill in the header, the price, the description and the final URL. Enter at least 3 items.
5. 05Select Save.

A promotion:

1. 01On the same page, select the plus button, then Promotion.
2. 02Choose the account, a campaign or an ad group.
3. 03Select an occasion, or leave it out. Then select the language and the currency.
4. 04Under Promotion type, choose a monetary or a percentage discount. Enter the item and the final URL.
5. 05Under Promotional details, add what the offer needs, a promo code or a minimum order. Under Promotion dates, add the dates to show on the ad.
6. 06Expand Advanced options to set when it’s eligible to show, then save.

Both go on the account, a campaign or an ad group. For promotions Google says which level wins: “the most specific will be used.” An ad group’s promotion shows instead of its campaign’s or the account’s, and a campaign’s shows instead of the account’s. The pages read for this guide don’t say which level wins for a price asset.

In a new Search campaign. Google lists both on the step that adds assets, and shows only sitelink, callout and call assets by default. Select Ad asset there to show the rest.

On Performance Max. Google lists price assets among the assets a Performance Max campaign takes, and its promotion page shows promotions on Performance Max’s Shorts and in-stream placements.

Scheduling a price asset. Google’s pages disagree. Its price asset page says you can “specify the dates, days of week, or times of day” one is eligible to show. Its assets upgrade page lists “Start and end time and ad schedule in price and structure snippets” among the features it deprecated. Don’t build a plan on scheduling one.

Google says you can edit either later without resetting its performance statistics. An asset you edit and save is sent for review again.

Both follow Google’s standard ad policies and a policy of their own. The price asset policy doesn’t allow:

• A price in the header or the description. The price goes in its own field. Google excepts a price qualification that local law requires.
• Promotional text in the header or the description. Its examples are “Sale” in the header and “Free Shipping” in the description.
• An item’s page on another site. Each item’s URL has to lead to the same domain as the final URL of the ad it shows with.
• A header or a description that doesn’t fit the type. Under Brands, a header holds a brand you offer and nothing else. Under Product categories, it names a category, and not an individual product or a brand.

The promotion policy adds one rule: the promo code field holds a promo code. Its examples of what doesn’t belong there are product descriptions, phone numbers and promotional statements.

Both policies name Google’s Unavailable offers policy as a common cause of disapproval. Its summary there: “Products or services should be priced accurately, easily found at the ad’s destination, and match with headers and descriptions.” The policy itself doesn’t allow promising products, services or promotional offers “that are unavailable or aren’t easily found from the destination,” and its examples include a deal that is no longer active and a price that is inaccurate. So the price on the card has to be on the page it opens, and the offer has to be running.

Google says most assets are reviewed within 1 business day. A disapproved asset doesn’t show until it’s edited and reviewed again, and the Assets page’s Policy details column says why. Google’s policy page says to remove an asset you won’t fix. The disapproved ads guide covers fixing one and appealing.

Google’s advice is to use every asset relevant to your business, and to consider 4 or more types. The four do different jobs:

A sale is where they part. A promotion is made for it: Google says promotion assets highlight sales and special offers “without needing to take up character limits in your ad’s headlines and descriptions.” A callout can say it too, since Google’s callout page names “sales and special offers.” A price asset can’t: its policy allows no promotional text. Google’s price asset page does say you can change item names and descriptions to keep them “up-to-date for sales and special offers,” so change the prices and the items, and put the sale’s words in a promotion.

A price asset and sitelinks both send each click to a page of its own. Use the price asset where the price decides the click: Google says showing prices early “can help you increase the quality of clicks your ads receive.” Sitelinks suit any page worth a visit, and Google’s examples are a specific product or store hours. The sitelinks and callouts guide covers both, and the structured snippets guide covers the list that can’t be clicked.

Google’s Recommendations page can ask for a price asset too. It lists Add price assets to your ads, “Recommended because similar advertisers use price assets.” Google’s list of recommendation types has none for a promotion.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Assets › Assets. The table opens on its Associations tab, with a row for each place an asset is added.
2. 02Select the card for the asset type above the table, Price or Promotion.
3. 03Read Impressions, Clicks, CTR and Cost for each row.
4. 04To see clicks on the asset itself, select Segment, then Click type.

Impressions is how often your ad appeared with the asset. Clicks combines clicks on the ad’s headline with clicks on the asset, which is why the segment matters. Google warns that a total row can be less than its rows added up, since assets shown together in one ad count once there. The Status column says whether each is eligible.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Assets › Assets and select the Price card on the Associations tab.
2. 02For each row, note whether the asset is added to the account, a campaign or an ad group. An asset added in two places is listed twice.
3. 03To count one somebody paused, select Add filter and choose Assets status: All but removed.
4. 04Do the same on the Promotion card.
5. 05Work out what each campaign’s ads show, and mark each campaign showing none of a kind your other campaigns show.

Read that way, the question is fit. A price list of sofas says nothing to someone searching for rugs, which is Google’s point about matching your keywords. A list of the whole range and a store-wide offer suit any campaign that sells the whole store. And a campaign left without one on purpose is a decision, not a gap.

Every day Goldbeater reads every asset linked to your account, to each campaign that is serving or paused and waiting to launch, and to its ad groups. A price asset or a promotion doesn’t fit every business, so Goldbeater asks for one only where your account already shows one. It raises a Search campaign when all of this holds:

• Nothing is linked there. No price asset, or no promotion, is linked to the campaign or to the account. One that is linked and disapproved isn’t asked for again: it has a finding of its own, below, which says what to mend.
• Nobody switched it off. A link of that kind paused on the campaign, or on the account, is a choice, and Goldbeater doesn’t ask for it.
• At least half of the others show one. Goldbeater counts the other serving campaigns with one linked at the campaign level, out of your other Search campaigns and any other campaign showing one.
• Its ad groups don’t carry their own. A campaign with an ad group that has its own isn’t judged on that kind, since what its ads show differs from one ad group to the next.

The finding is low. One finding names every kind of asset the campaign lacks and lists the campaigns showing each. Goldbeater asks a price asset and a promotion of Search campaigns, and a Performance Max campaign that shows one counts among the campaigns that do.

That is Competitors as the table has it: no price asset and no promotion, with 4 other campaigns showing each. The finding is advice. A price list and an offer are yours to write, so Goldbeater drafts no change, and whether either fits what Competitors sells is your call.

The same check raises two more findings on this account. Rugs — Broad has no callouts and no structured snippet, which the sitelinks and callouts guide shows, and Sofas — Phrase has one snippet header, which the structured snippets guide shows.

Four more checks read a price asset or a promotion once it’s there:

• One Google won’t show. A price asset or a promotion Google disapproved, or one a policy allows in none of the places its campaigns target. One finding per asset, listing every campaign and ad group it’s linked to: medium where those campaigns carry at least a thousandth of your 30 days’ spend, and otherwise low. The disapproved ads guide covers it.
• A page that doesn’t load. Goldbeater opens the page each item of an enabled price asset and each enabled promotion sends clicks to, whether or not it took a click, and asks a failing page a second time. A page that answers 404, 410, a server error, an unresolved domain or a refused certificate both times is raised, naming the price item by its header: low with no click in 30 days, medium with a click, and high from $200 of clicks. The destination not working guide covers it.
• A word you never want. A promotion whose item holds a word you’ve listed in the account’s Settings as never wanted in your ads, low. The image extensions guide covers it.
• A misspelled word. A common English misspelling in a price asset’s header or description, or in a promotion’s item, low. The ad copy guide covers it.

Sitelinks have a check of their own. Goldbeater raises a Search or Performance Max campaign with fewer than the six sitelinks Google recommends between the campaign and the account, which the sitelinks and callouts guide shows. The audit checklist has every asset line with where to find it in Google Ads.

What is a price extension in Google Ads?

A row of up to 8 cards under a Search ad, each showing something you sell, a short description, a price and a link to its own page. Google has called it a price asset since September 2022, when it renamed every ad extension an asset.

What is a promotion extension in Google Ads?

An offer shown under your ad: a percentage or a monetary discount on an item, with an optional promo code or minimum order, and an optional occasion such as Black Friday shown as a bold label. Google now calls it a promotion asset.

How many items does a price extension need, and how long can each be?

At least 3, and Google recommends 5 or more. Its API reference takes up to 8. A header and a description take up to 25 characters each, and both can be shortened on a narrow phone.

Do price extensions and promotion extensions cost anything?

Adding one costs nothing. A click on a price item or on a promotion costs what a click on the ad’s headline does, and Google charges no more than two clicks for one impression of an ad and its assets.

Can I put a sale in a price extension?

Not in its words. Google’s price asset policy allows no promotional text in a header or a description, and its examples are Sale and Free Shipping. Change the prices if the sale changes them, and say the sale in a promotion or a callout.

Which campaigns and levels can use them?

Both can be added to the account, a campaign or an ad group. Google’s pages put price assets on Search ads and list them among Performance Max’s assets, and put promotions on Search ads and on Shorts and in-stream video ads. For promotions the most specific level wins.

Why isn’t my promotion extension showing?

Google shows an asset only when it predicts it will improve the ad, and when the ad’s position and Ad Rank are high enough. A promotion with an occasion shows only between that occasion’s dates, stops serving if it hasn’t been edited for 6 months, and loses to a promotion at a more specific level. A disapproved one doesn’t show at all.