Direct Offers in AI Mode: Promotion Feed Setup for the New Format

Direct Offers picked up two important upgrades at Google Marketing Live 2026. Promotion bundling lets Gemini assemble the most relevant offer per shopper. Native checkout through Universal Commerce Protocol closes the loop without redirecting the shopper to a merchant site.

For merchants, the change is practical. The promotion feed went from a static schedule to a dynamic menu the system reads on every query. Setting that menu up well now determines how much lift Direct Offers actually produce.

What Direct Offers do

Direct Offers are an AI Mode ad format. They surface promotions at the moment of purchase intent, inside conversational answers. The shopper sees a promotion, taps the buy-with-one-time-code button, and the discount applies automatically through Google Pay.

Three updates landed at GML 2026.

• Promotion bundling. Merchants upload multiple promotion types. Gemini picks the most relevant combination per query.
• Native checkout. Retailers connected through UCP can complete the purchase inside the ad.
• Travel expansion. Booking.com, Expedia, and other travel partners can surface offers in AI Mode trip planning.

Direct Offers originally launched in January 2026. The expansion at GML 2026 turned them from a pilot into a default revenue lever for AI Mode traffic.

How promotion bundling changes feed design

Promotion bundling reframes how merchants think about discount strategy.

Previously, a single promotion ran for a defined window. The merchant decided who saw what. Now, the merchant uploads a menu of available offers, and the system selects per query.

Practical implications.

• More promotion variety in the feed gives the system more to work with.
• Overlapping promotions can both be eligible for the same shopper. Stacking rules need explicit definition.
• The promotion feed becomes more dynamic than the main product feed. Cadence matters.

Related posts

• Google Marketing Live 2026 Shopping recap for merchants
• Universal Commerce Protocol merchant checklist 2026
• Google Shopping budget optimization

Promotion feed structure for bundling

Merchant Center’s promotion feed schema supports the formats Direct Offers needs. The work is populating it well, not adding new fields.

Promotion types to include

To give bundling enough to work with, upload a mix of these promotion types.

• Percentage off (specific products, category, or order)
• Dollar amount off (specific products, category, or order)
• Free shipping (threshold-based or unconditional)
• Free gift with purchase
• Buy-one-get-one variants

A feed with one promotion type running gives the system no bundling choice. A feed with three or four types running concurrently lets the system match the shopper’s intent.

Conditions to define explicitly

Each promotion needs clear conditions to avoid bundling errors.

• Minimum order value
• Eligible product categories or product IDs
• Stacking rules (whether the promotion can combine with others)
• Start and end times with timezone
• Promotion code if applicable

Bundling errors usually trace back to vague conditions. A promotion that says “applies to select products” without specifying which products invites the system to pick a combination the merchant did not intend.

Promotion ID hygiene

Each promotion needs a unique, durable ID. Reusing IDs across promotional cycles confuses tracking and breaks attribution inside Direct Offers reporting.

Timing and cadence

The promotion feed has its own update cadence in Merchant Center. Under Direct Offers with bundling, that cadence matters more than before.

Push on every change

Every change to a promotion (creation, edit, pause, end) should push to Merchant Center within minutes. A promotion that ends but lingers in the feed will still be eligible for bundling, which produces unintended bundles.

Pre-publish for scheduled launches

For promotions with future start times, push the feed entry well before the start time so the system has it ready. The start time field controls eligibility, not the upload time.

Honor end times precisely

End times need to be exact. A promotion that runs past its scheduled end inside Direct Offers is a manual cleanup job.

Native checkout requirements

Native checkout inside Direct Offers depends on UCP integration. The checklist for native checkout participation overlaps with general UCP readiness.

• Pricing accuracy with sub-hourly feed updates
• Inventory truth with rapid out-of-stock removal
• Durable returns and shipping policy URLs
• Variant grouping consistency
• The native_commerce attribute populated on eligible products

Direct Offers without native checkout still work. The shopper sees the offer and redirects to the merchant site to redeem. Native checkout removes that step and is the main reason to participate in UCP for Direct-Offers-driven traffic.

Promotion bundling testing pattern

Before scaling bundling across the catalog, run a controlled test.

Step 1: stage a multi-offer set

Upload three to five concurrent promotions covering different types and products. Use distinct promotion IDs and clear conditions.

Step 2: monitor live bundling output

Sample Direct Offers that surface to test traffic. Verify that the bundles match the merchant’s stacking intent. Look for unexpected combinations or excluded offers.

Step 3: iterate stacking rules

Adjust the stacking conditions on each promotion to refine which combinations the system can produce. Tighter rules produce more predictable bundles. Looser rules give the system more flexibility but more variability in margin.

Step 4: track per-bundle margin

Build reporting that ties bundle composition to gross margin. Bundling can erode margin faster than single-promotion strategies if monitoring lags.

What to monitor in Direct Offers reporting

Add four metrics to the Direct Offers reporting stack.

• Bundle composition distribution. Which combinations the system actually produced.
• Per-bundle conversion rate. How each combination performed.
• Per-bundle gross margin. The financial impact of each bundle.
• Cart-to-fulfillment match rate. Whether native-checkout orders fulfilled at the promised price and stock.

Reporting at this granularity is what turns Direct Offers from a black box into a managed channel.

Where to go next

If UCP eligibility is your next gate, work through the Universal Commerce Protocol merchant checklist. For broader Shopping campaign budget context, see Google Shopping budget optimization. For the complete GML 2026 picture, the Shopping recap covers every related announcement.

Direct Offers with promotion bundling turn the promotion feed into a dynamic strategy layer. Merchants who treat it as a menu, not a calendar, will get the lift the format is built to produce.