Anyone Tried The Google Merchant Center Automated Discounts Beta?
Has anyone tested Automated Discounts for their Google Merchant Center (beta program that began back in 2021)? What was your experience/results? The only results I’ve ever heard about were from the case study Google shared with me way back when we were first asked if we wanted to join the beta (“Niceshops drives 56% more conversions with automated discounts”).
We declined to join the beta when we were invited as the beta didn’t make sense for the accounts that were invited and the client I really wanted to try it on had a BigCommerce website which wasn’t supported when the beta first came out.
What’s brought this up for me is that I recently found out that Google now has instructions for implementing this beta on websites such as BigCommerce which are not supported… But thought I should check with other advertisers about their experience before sinking a ton of time into it.
Info docs for setup:
Setting up Automated Discounts for Shopify/WooCommerce: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/11542980?hl=en
Manual setup for other ecommerce platforms: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/10295759
Thanks!
The short answer is:
Implementing the Google Merchant Center Automated Discounts beta on an unsupported platform like BigCommerce requires a technical, API-driven solution to meet the core requirements of providing cost_of_goods_sold and auto_pricing_min_price product attributes, and ensuring the final discounted price dynamically appears on your product landing page via the URL and on your conversion tracking data.
The most robust and cost-effective method involves leveraging the BigCommerce API and the Google Merchant API (formerly Content API for Shopping) to automate the product feed updates with the necessary attributes.
For real-time price synchronization on the frontend and accurate reporting, you must utilize Google Tag Manager (GTM) in a server-side container hosted on Stape or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to process the discounted price from the incoming URL parameter, update your front-end price display, and include the final cart data in the purchase conversion event sent to Google Ads and Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
This server-side approach minimizes front-end latency and ensures data accuracy, directly addressing the requirement for a transaction-ready website that honors the Google-provided price.
The long answer is:
The challenge of implementing the Google Merchant Center Automated Discounts beta on a BigCommerce store, which lacks native support for the full technical requirements, is a classic Marketing Technology problem that is best solved through direct API integration and server-side tracking.
The core APIs involved are the BigCommerce API and the Google Merchant API.
The BigCommerce API should be used to extract or calculate the cost_of_goods_sold (COGS) and the auto_pricing_min_price for each product, as these are the two mandatory inputs Google’s AI requires to determine the optimal discount.
Once this data is prepared, the Google Merchant API is the mechanism you must use to programmatically upload and update your product data feed.
While the BigCommerce native channel can sync basic product data, a custom solution using the Merchant API provides granular control to reliably inject these two new required fields without relying on third-party feed extensions, which may incur additional monthly costs.
Using the Merchant API is a cost-effective, long-term solution as it avoids recurring app fees and future-proofs your implementation against platform-specific integration changes.
The second part of the solution is the front-end synchronization and accurate conversion reporting, which must be handled with a server-side setup using Google Tag Manager (GTM) and a secure cloud environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
When a user clicks an automated discount ad, Google appends a special URL parameter containing the discounted price.
Your BigCommerce site must be configured to read this parameter and dynamically display the discounted price on the product page.
For robust and compliant tracking, this price must also be immediately captured and sent to your server-side GTM container.
The server container, running on GCP or Stape, receives the hit and then processes the incoming discounted price from the URL or data layer, which is crucial for the Conversion with Cart Data (CwCD) requirement.
The server-side GTM then forwards the clean, final transaction data, including the correct price and discount, to the Google Ads conversion API and the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Measurement Protocol or Google Analytics Data API for accurate gross profit and ROAS calculations.
This server-side synchronization is critical because it ensures that Google receives validated, first-party data that reflects the price the user saw and paid, which is necessary for the integrity of the Automated Discounts program’s optimization loop.
This entire process, from BigCommerce data extraction to Merchant API feed submission and GTM-Stape server-side price synchronization, provides a comprehensive, highly technical, and cost-efficient method to participate in the beta, transforming an unsupported e-commerce platform into a fully compliant advertising environment.
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