New Google Merchant Center Promotion Feature, Target by Audience

Hello everyone, Emmanuel here from FeedArmy. We’ve got another exciting update from Google Merchant Center promotions!

So far this year, we’ve already had two significant new features. First, Google added the option to target promotions through Google Wallet, enabling you to display offers to users who select that payment method during checkout. Then, a few weeks ago, we gained the ability to target top-performing products when setting up promotions.

And now, Google has released audience targeting for promotions, just in time for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.

🧩 What’s New: Audience Targeting for Promotions

When setting up a new promotion in Merchant Center, the first step now provides you with additional targeting options. You can select:

• Show to all users: Your promotion will appear to anyone searching for your products on Google.
• Preferred audiences – Prioritize specific audience segments to offer them special promotions.

When you click on “Add audiences”, you’ll now see two new types available:

1. New Customers – This audience includes users who haven’t previously interacted with your brand. Note that this option currently applies only to Shopping ads, not to free listings. If you select both Shopping ads and organic options, the promotion will only show for Shopping ads.
2. Location Audiences – This feature allows you to target customers based on their geographic location. These users may be located in, regularly in, or show interest in specific regions, similar to how geographic targeting works in Google Ads. However, this audience type is exclusive to organic listings. If you select both Shopping ads and organic, it will apply only to organic.

⚙️ How to Use It

Before submitting a location-based promotion, you’ll need to create a region within Merchant Center. Follow the prompts to define the region where your offer applies.

From there, you can decide whether to:

• Keep your promotion open to any customer on Google (the default option).
• Or target a specific audience to refine who sees your promotion and potentially improve performance.

Keep in mind that how your promotions appear across Google can depend on the audience types you choose.

💭 My Thoughts

It’s great to see Google continuing to expand the promotional flexibility of Merchant Center. The ability to target specific customer groups opens up more strategic possibilities, especially when combining promotions with product-level performance data.

That said, it’s somewhat puzzling why new customer targeting is only available for Shopping ads, while location targeting is limited to organic searches. Both options should be available across all listing types, especially when running region-specific campaigns or in-store promotions.

Still, these updates are a step in the right direction, giving advertisers more tools to personalize offers and reach customers in more innovative ways.

🚀 In Summary

We now have three new features this year for Google Merchant Center promotions:

1. Google Wallet integration
2. Top-performing product targeting
3. Audience targeting (new customers and locations)

With these updates, you can better tailor your promotions for maximum impact, just in time for the busiest shopping season of the year.

If you have any questions about implementing or optimizing these features, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next update.

🙋Questions or Need Help?

Try MerchantCodex (Courses, Forum, Coding, etc)

Or do you have a private question or need private specialist support? Get in touch! I’m happy to help you optimize your Google Shopping listings for the best performance.