Google is done being just a librarian. With the rollout of ads in AI Mode, announced at NRF 2026 this week, Google is making its most aggressive pivot yet toward “Agentic Commerce.”
At the center of this shift is a new feature called Direct Offers.
Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ad Liaison, framed the mindset shift perfectly in her announcement tweet: “Advertisers should think of Direct Offers less like a standard ad and more like a salesperson negotiating a deal on your behalf.”
This isn’t just a new ad placement. It’s a fundamental change in how paid search interacts with shopper intent. For retailers, it means moving from passive product display to active, automated negotiation.
This is a fundamental shift in how paid search captures intent. Here’s how Direct Offers actually work and why they change your margin strategy.
Defining the Direct Offer
If you’ve used Google’s AI Overviews lately for shopping research, you’ve seen the new layout. You get a synthesized answer to your query, flanked by relevant products.
A Direct Offer is a personalized, AI-triggered incentive, like a “20% off” badge or a “Free Shipping” notification, that appears on those product listings right when a user is deep in the research phase.
These aren’t separate campaigns you have to manage. Direct Offers are an enhancement integrated directly into Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. Think of them as a turbocharger for your existing setup, specifically designed for the high-intent environment of AI Mode.
The Mechanics of the “Negotiation”
The most interesting aspect of this update is the concept of the AI acting as a “salesperson.” What does that actually mean in practice?
Standard shopping ads are static. They show the price and the product regardless of who is looking. Direct Offers are dynamic. Google’s AI is now analyzing real-time market context, competitor pricing, and specific shopper intent signals to decide if and when to present a deal. The goal is incrementality.
If the system detects a user is likely to buy your product at full price, it shouldn’t show a discount. That’s just giving away margin. But if the signals suggest the user is hesitant, comparing you heavily against a cheaper competitor, or likely to abandon the search, the AI “salesperson” steps in. It slides a promo code across the virtual counter to close the gap.
It’s important to note that the AI isn’t inventing these discounts. There are no “hallucinations” here. It pulls verified promotions directly from the data you provide in Google Merchant Center. It’s simply deciding the optimal moment to deploy them.
Strategic Implications for Retailers
The digital marketing industry has talked about “the right message at the right time” for years. This is the closest practical application we’ve seen of that concept.
For retailers, this requires a shift in strategy regarding margins and promotions. Instead of blasting out a sitewide 15% off sale to everyone, you are empowering Google’s system to use that 15% selectively to convert fence-sitters.
The battleground has shifted. The new “moment of truth” is that synthesized product view within AI Mode. Your ability to win that moment now depends not just on your product image or price point, but on how effectively your data feeds can empower Google’s AI agent to close the sale for you.
The Universal Commerce Protocol
Direct Offers is just one piece of a larger puzzle Google calls the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP).
Google is trying to keep the entire shopping journey within its ecosystem. Alongside Direct Offers, they are rolling out “Business Agents,” allowing brands to handle customer queries and checkouts via AI representatives. The endgame is a seamless experience where a user researches a product in AI Mode, receives a Direct Offer negotiated by the agent, and checks out via Google Pay without ever visiting the retailer’s actual website.
How to Prepare for the Shift
Transitioning to this “agentic” model requires more than just flipping a switch in your settings. It requires a fundamental cleanup of how your brand communicates its value to Google’s systems. Here is how to position your account for the rollout.
1. Treat Your Merchant Center Feed as a Sales Script
In the past, the Merchant Center was a back-end utility. Now, it’s the source material for your AI salesperson. If your promo codes are expired or your product descriptions are vague, the “negotiation” will fail before it starts. Ensure your promotions are categorized correctly and that your feed reflects your most competitive, real-time offers. The AI can’t be closer if you give it bad terms to work with.
2. Audit Performance Max for AI Mode Signals
You need to know where your conversions are actually coming from. Start monitoring your Performance Max insights specifically for traffic originating from “AI Mode” or synthesized results. Understanding how these users differ from traditional searchers will help you tailor which offers you feed into the system, perhaps they are deeper in the research phase or more price-sensitive.
3. Optimize for Agentic SEO
Traditional SEO was built for humans scrolling through blue links. Agentic SEO is built for AI agents that pull data to make recommendations. This means your site’s technical structure needs to be flawless, specifically your schema markup and structured data. You aren’t just trying to “rank” anymore; you are trying to be the most “readable” and “reliable” source for an AI that is looking to verify price, availability, and specific product attributes on the fly.
Getting Your Data Ready
We are moving rapidly from an era of “Search” to an era of “Action.”
The retailers who win in this new environment won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They will be the ones with the cleanest data.
If your Merchant Center promotion feeds are messy, outdated, or incomplete, your AI salesperson will be ineffective. Now is the time to audit your Promotion Assets and ensure your product data is pristine. The AI can only negotiate as effectively as the data you feed it allows.