Google Shopping's New “Deal Ends” Annotations: What Ecommerce Brands Must Do Before Q4

On August 25, 2026, Google announced “Deal Ends” annotations for Shopping ads, a new experimental feature that automatically adds countdown badges like “3 days left” or “5 hours left” to products expiring within 7 days. For ecommerce brands running Shopping campaigns, this means your existing sale price and promotion data in Merchant Center can now trigger high-urgency click signals automatically, with no new technical setup required.

What Does Google’s “Deal Ends” Annotation Mean for Your Shopping Campaigns?

These urgency badges appear directly below your product prices in Shopping results, pulling from your existing sale_price and sale_price_effective_date attributes in Merchant Center. Advertisers cannot opt in or opt out of this feature while it is in its experimental phase, which means your products either qualify automatically or they do not, based entirely on how your product feed data is configured. Google’s goal is straightforward: surface time-sensitive deals to high-intent shoppers at the moment they are comparing products, before they ever click through to your site.

How Do Google’s “Deal Ends” Annotations Work in Merchant Center?

Google generates Deal Ends badges automatically from your existing Merchant Center product feed. The badge activates when three conditions are met: your product has a sale_price attribute, a sale_price_effective_date with an expiration date, and the deal meets Google’s eligibility thresholds for that time of year. No new feed attributes, no additional ad formats, and no campaign-level toggles are required.

There are two eligibility windows depending on the time of year:

Non-holiday periods:

• Minimum 5% discount off the post-deal price
• Must be the lowest effective price for that item in the last 15 days
• Deal must be scheduled to expire within 7 days
• Minimum 15-day interval between Deal Ends annotations for the same product

Holiday period (October 15 to January 5):

• Minimum 10% discount off the post-deal price
• Must be the lowest effective price for that item in the last 60 days
• Deal must be scheduled to expire within 7 days
• Minimum 60-day interval between Deal Ends annotations for the same product

The 60-day interval requirement during the holiday window is the detail most brands will miss. If you run a promotional discount on a product before October 15, that 60-day clock starts ticking. Brands that want Deal Ends badges on their highest-revenue SKUs during Black Friday and Cyber Monday need to be deliberate about when they schedule promotions starting now. For a broader look at how this fits into Google’s evolving Shopping strategy, see our full Google Ads 2026 update tracker.

The 60-day holiday eligibility rule means your promotion calendar in September and October directly determines which SKUs earn urgency badges during the most competitive shopping window of the year.

Why Does the Holiday Eligibility Window Create a Strategy Constraint for Ecommerce Brands?

The 60-day lowest-price rule during the holiday window mirrors logic already present in Google’s Price Drop annotations. It is designed to prevent brands from artificially creating urgency through repeated, overlapping promotions. The practical consequence: if a product has been on sale at the same discount level within the prior 60 days, it will not qualify for a Deal Ends badge during your peak holiday campaigns.

For brands planning Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, this creates a real planning constraint. Running a “fall sale” at 15% off in early October on a top SKU means that same product’s November promotion may not qualify for the annotation, even if the intent is to create stronger urgency during the higher-stakes window. The badge will only fire if your holiday price is the lowest in the past two months.

Brands with strong CRO instincts already know urgency signals lift conversion rates. Deal Ends annotations bring that psychology into the search results page before the click even happens.

The feature is currently available globally, with the exception of EEA+ countries, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. There is no Deal Ends-specific reporting in Google Ads yet, so measuring badge impact requires tracking CTR and conversion rate changes at the product level during promotional periods and comparing performance against baseline.

What Should You Do Now with Google’s “Deal Ends” Annotations?

1. Audit your Merchant Center feed for sale_price_effective_date coverage. The badge only fires when both sale_price and sale_price_effective_date are present and the expiration date falls within 7 days. Pull a product data quality report from Merchant Center and identify which SKUs are missing the expiration date attribute. Fix those gaps before your next promotion.
2. Map your top SKUs against the 60-day holiday eligibility window. List your highest-revenue products and their last sale price dates. Any product that has been discounted within the past 45 days is at risk of not qualifying for a Deal Ends badge during Black Friday and Cyber Monday under the 60-day lowest-price rule. Build a deliberate gap in promotions for those SKUs before October 15 if you want the annotation to fire during peak.
3. Set sale_price_effective_date expiration dates within 7 days of your promotion end. The badge only appears when the deal expires within 7 days. If your promotions run for 30-day windows, the annotation will only activate in the final week. Consider compressing promotional windows to keep the countdown badge visible for a larger share of your campaign runtime.
4. Track CTR and conversion rate at the product level during active promotions. There is no Deal Ends-specific reporting yet. Create a custom report in Google Ads comparing product-level performance metrics during promotional periods when badge eligibility is met versus when it is not. This baseline will be critical when Google eventually adds annotation-specific reporting.
5. Treat feed optimization as a Q4 media priority, not just a technical cleanup task. Ecommerce brands that invest in full-funnel campaign infrastructure before Q4 consistently outperform those that patch feed gaps mid-campaign. The window to configure your feed data for holiday annotation eligibility is open now and closes fast.

Related Reading

• Every Google Ads Change in 2026 (Updated Weekly)
• Google Shopping Image Requirement: Every Product Needs 500x500 Pixels by January 31, 2027
• CTC’s Google Ads Agency Services

Frequently Asked Questions

Are You Ready to Make the Most of Google’s Newest Shopping Features Before Q4?

CTC works with 7-9 figure ecommerce brands to connect product feed strategy, paid media, and conversion infrastructure into one system that compounds. If your Q4 preparation does not include feed-level annotation optimization, your Shopping campaigns will be at a structural disadvantage during the highest-intent shopping window of the year.

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