Google AI Mode · Direct Offers
Google’s AI decides when your discount appears. You decide what it’s allowed to give away.
Written forMerchandising and pricing leads, heads of trading, paid media teams and founders
5 min read
Google’s Direct Offers shows your discount to shoppers its AI thinks are ready to buy. Some of those shoppers would have paid full price. Not in the US pilot yet? Your email codes and site promotions give margin away in the same way.
What Google changed
Google announced Direct Offers at NRF in January 2026. It is a pilot inside Google Ads. When a shopper in AI Mode looks ready to buy, Google can show them an exclusive discount from you. You set the offer and its limits. Google’s AI picks the moment. Petco and e.l.f. were among the first pilot partners.
Now an AI inside the shopping answer itself picks who sees your offer. It picks with what it knows about the shopper. You know something it doesn’t: who buys from you every winter at full price. In your own channels, you decide who gets a discount. In Direct Offers, Google decides, so give it tighter limits and, if you choose, a list of full-price customers to leave out.
Two shoppers. One needed the discount.
“20% off? Sold.”
The discount won the sale.
“Thanks! I was buying anyway.”
Margin given away for nothing.
A discount for someone who was already buying is a refund nobody asked for.
Who needs your discount?
You know each customer’s full-price history. Google doesn’t. Here is how five of them should be treated.
- Buys every winter at full price, opened your last three emailsNo discount
- First visit, comparing you with two other storesFull offer
- No order for a year, high lifetime valueFull offer
- The item is almost out of stock and selling fastNo discount
- Low-margin product, price-sensitive shopperSmaller offer
How much margin do you give away?
Every number below is yours. Start with how many discounted buyers would have paid full price anyway. Use a guess. Your order history can give the real answer.
Your guess. We can estimate it from your order history.
Margin you lose without winning one extra sale.
a year, kept in your margin.
Want the real figure? We estimate it from your own order history, for free.
Book your free margin checkWhat you get from Syntasa
Syntasa Customer Intelligence and its Decisioning Agent decide, for each customer, whether a discount is needed and how large it should be. The Decisioning Agent turns customer history into offer rules.
- It reads each customer’s history: what they bought, at what price, and how often.
- It checks margin and stock first, and holds back discounts on items that are selling out.
- It sets the offers and limits you give Direct Offers, and decides who gets discounts in the channels you control, such as email codes and site promotions.
- Your data stays in your systems. Nothing leaves unless you approve where it goes, and every transfer is logged.
Customer Intelligence is Syntasa’s platform for customer data. The Customer Insights Agent and the Decisioning Agent run on it.
Your first step: book 30 minutes and bring last year’s holiday offers and your headline order numbers. On the call, we estimate how much those offers gave to full-price buyers. Then we agree a plan to measure it on your own order history.
of ad spend optimized with Syntasa
customer records unified into one view
Find out how much margin your discounts give away.
From your past full-price buying, we estimate how many discounted orders came from customers who would have paid full price. Then we show what better rules would have kept.
- Uses your past Black Friday and holiday offers.
- Nothing leaves your systems unless you approve it.
- Ready before you plan next season’s offers.
Questions we get
It is a Google Ads pilot in the US with selected advertisers. The same rules apply to every discount you run, so you can estimate your margin loss now and be ready when you join.
You decide. Direct Offers works from the offers and limits you set. In your own channels, Syntasa applies the rules inside your systems. If you choose to send an audience to Google Ads, you approve it first and the transfer is logged.
That is one rule. The Decisioning Agent also weighs margin, stock, season and how likely each customer is to buy without help.
Yes. Email codes, sitewide sales and affiliate offers give margin away in the same way. Direct Offers only makes it happen faster.
The margin check uses order history you already have, so there is nothing to build first. Customers usually reach production in about six weeks.
Direct Offers details are from Google’s NRF 2026 announcement and Google Ads documentation. Related: make sure AI assistants recommend your products.
John Bizimana
Director of Enterprise GTM at Syntasa. You can reach him atjohn.bizimana@syntasa.com.