Could Google Ads promote an old discount from your website?

Your weekend sale ended, but the banner is still on a landing page. The checkout has returned to its usual price. Could that forgotten banner become part of an ad?

It is a risk worth checking if your account uses Google Ads Automated Promotions. Google says the feature identifies offers on website landing pages and can attach them to eligible Search and Performance Max campaigns. Google also says it verifies that offers are active and non-expired. The practical problem is that an old offer left visible on the site can still look current to a visitor—and may remain a source for an automated asset. Google’s documentation does not establish that every stale page will produce an ad or that a site correction will remove an asset immediately. Treat the website, the ad asset, and the checkout or inquiry path as one promotion that needs an owner.

Check whether the feature can apply to your campaigns

According to Google’s Automated Promotions help page, the feature draws from landing pages for active Search or Performance Max campaigns with location assets. It does not use an eligible campaign while a manual promotion is running on that campaign. Account-level automated assets must be on, and the promotion must comply with Google Ads policies. A business without this campaign setup should not assume the feature is active merely because it has a sale banner on its website.

Google says each extracted promotion is eligible to serve for less than 24 hours. After that window, Google may enable it again if its systems can still verify the offer as visibly available on the website. This is an eligibility period, not a guaranteed crawl schedule or an immediate takedown time. The same help page says Google expects the process to change when it can extract promotion start and end dates. For now, a dated website offer still needs a human process for ending it.

This is separate from deciding whether the business should run a sale at all. An Ottawa shop might have a legitimate weekend discount on a particular product, while a service business might publish a limited consultation offer. Either can create a mismatch if the page, ad, staff instructions, and transaction path are updated at different times. Those are hypothetical examples, not observations of a live Google Ads account.

Audit the offer where Google and customers can find it

Start with the final landing pages used by campaigns, not just the homepage. Search the pages for sale banners, product cards, old campaign pages, downloadable flyers, and links to terms. Open them on a phone as well as a desktop. If an offer appears in English and French, check both versions rather than assuming one update changed the other.

For every visible discount, write down the product or service, who qualifies, the actual price or saving, the start and end of the offer, the applicable location, any code or minimum purchase, and where a customer can redeem it. Confirm that the same terms appear where someone acts on the offer. A landing page saying “discount available” while checkout shows the regular price is not a tidy handoff. Neither is an ad for an in-store offer that points to a page with no store or redemption details.

Give each offer a named owner and a removal task. At the end of the promotion, update the landing page and any reused site component, then check the actual public page after publishing. Review cached or translated versions you control if they can still be reached. Keep the approved terms and the dates of site changes in a simple promotion log. This makes it easier to answer a customer’s question and to diagnose an unexpected asset later.

For Canadian businesses, accuracy also matters beyond the ad interface. The Competition Bureau’s guidance on false or misleading representations discusses material claims and says conditions attached to offers such as discounts and coupons should be clearly disclosed. Its ordinary selling price guidance warns against invented regular prices. The exact legal analysis depends on the claim and circumstances; a business should review its own promotion terms rather than treating an automated asset as approval of the offer.

Inspect what Google actually added

In Google Ads, go to Assets, filter Asset type to Promotion, and check the Added by column. Google’s instructions say automatically sourced items appear as Google AI; the interface can show source and asset details when you inspect them. Compare the promotion text and destination with the current site, including eligibility and geographic limits. Also review the campaign where it appears. The fact that the website has been corrected does not, by itself, show what is currently eligible to serve in the account.

If the asset is wrong, correct the website offer first so customers do not encounter the same error after a click. Then review the promotion asset and the account’s automated asset setting. Google documents an opt-out under Assets → Account level automated assets → Advanced settings → Automated promotions → Off. If you need precise wording and dates, Google’s manual promotion-asset guidance provides scheduling and promotional-detail controls. A manual asset still needs a matching, valid landing page; it is not a substitute for removing an expired offer from the site.

Google’s Misrepresentation policy says ads promising unavailable offers, or offers that are not easy to find at the destination, are not allowed. Do not assume automated verification eliminates your responsibility to check the ad and page together. If an error affects a live campaign, have the person responsible for the account review whether to pause the affected promotion or campaign while the page and asset are corrected. Record what was shown, when it was spotted, and what was changed; avoid guessing how many people saw it from a screenshot alone.

Choose automation only when the website can support it

Automated Promotions may save effort when offers are current, clearly written, and maintained by the same team that owns the campaign. It can also add a new review point to a website that carries short-lived discounts. Before enabling it, agree on who approves offer text, who updates the site at expiry, who reviews Google AI assets, and who answers customer questions if the ad and checkout disagree.

When exact start and end times, exclusions, or bilingual terms matter, manually controlled promotion assets may be easier to govern. When no one can reliably maintain the website’s offers, turning off automated promotions is a reasonable account choice until that process exists. The broader campaign and its landing pages still need routine review.

The useful lesson is simple: a sale message on your website is no longer only website copy when an ad system can use it as source material. Keep the offer true where it appears, set an end-of-sale task, and inspect the resulting ad assets. If your business needs help making its website’s service and offer pages clear and maintainable, discuss the website scope with Red Comet. We work on the website and visitor path; Google Ads account management should be assigned to the person or provider responsible for that account.

Sources

• Google Ads Help, About Automated promotions, accessed October 9, 2026. The page did not display a publication date when reviewed.
• Google Ads Help, About promotion assets, and Advertising Policies Help, Misrepresentation, accessed October 9, 2026.
• Competition Bureau Canada, False or misleading representations, and Ordinary selling price, accessed October 9, 2026.