Google introduced a pilot for an in-store coupon product that ties to Google Ads on Thursday. It brings consumers who search for specific products to the checkout counter in brick-and-mortar stores,
tying online advertising to in-store checkout.
"Local Coupons," the product, provides consumers with local retail discounts and serves up on phones to nearby shoppers who can discover local
deals on Search.
The coupon is saved to the consumers mobile wallet, so they can redeem it at the register.
Selin Song, vice president of Google Customer Solutions, believes the
coupon product, which ties to Search Ads, changes offline attribution. A video accompanied the product pilot launch in a Thursday post on LinkedIn.
"There's no printings, no scanning, or
finding the email," Song said, adding that this turns online interest into store visits.
For shoppers, she says, this will result in savings at checkout with the unique promo code.
For retailers, it turns clicks into customers. The coupon runs on a performance-driven payment model. Retailers only pay Google to serve the coupon when a customer uses it at checkout. That process
makes it easy to track how the brand's online ad drive in-store sales.
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The advertiser is billed when a customer physically stands at the register and successfully redeems the coupon at checkout. This
creates an in-store, one-on-one return on investment (ROI) metric for the ad spend.
When scanned by the cashier via point-of-sale integrations such as Clover or Lightspeed, both point-of-sale
systems, the barcode is cross-referenced instantly to prevent duplicate use.
The coupon is being offered through Google's expansion of Direct Offers and Agentic Commerce
initiatives. The Local Coupons framework links directly into Google’s Direct Offers pilot. This program brings personalized, high-intent digital deals to search platforms and Google's
AI shopping modes.
When this part of the program was announced in January,
several major household brands were piloting the integration part of the program.
Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and general manager
of ads and commerce at Google, introduced the integration that would eventually enable Local Coupons as Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a open standard for agentic commerce that works across
discovery and buying to post-purchase support.
UCP established a common language for agents and systems to operate across consumer surfaces, businesses and payment providers. Rather
than require unique connections for every individual agent, UCP enables all agents to interact.