Just in time for the holiday advertising ramp up, Google announced automated extensions for Shopping campaigns in Adwords, officially known as Product Listing Ads.

Automated extensions will be replacing promotional texts in PLAs. Promotional text was used to include additional ad copy in a PLA. These promotional texts are entered into Adwords manually.

We have seen many of these extensions already being tested in Google’s Product Listing Ads, including “Price Drop” and price comparisons.

The new automated extensions require no manual updates and are created from the advertiser’s product data feed and Merchant Center settings.

 These new extensions are displayed alongside your shopping ads (PLAs) at no additional work or cost. They use existing information you’ve provided in your Merchant Center settings and data feed to automatically show free shipping and price drop information in a consistent and digestible way for shoppers.

Google reported that automated extensions received better CTRs than promotional texts during testing.

Promotional texts will be discontinued in September while automated extensions will “surface” more frequently, according to Google.