Google has added a new promotion type to Google Merchant Center named "Sale events." Sale events are a type data that you can submit on Google and are shown on non-product-centric surfaces. This seems to be available in the US for free Merchant Center listings right now.
This was spotted by Dario Zannoni who posted about it on LinkedIn and wrote, "A new "Sale Event" promotion type has been released in Google Merchant Center."
The help document says:
Sale events highlight a general sale happening in your store on different Google surfaces. Events don’t show up on product listings, both organic and ads.Unlike promotions, events aren’t mapped to offers. Since events aren’t directly mapped to offers, you can use ranges for discounts, such as “Up to 40% off,” which isn’t allowed with promotions.
Dario Zannoni shared this screenshot:
He wrote, "Standard promotions in Merchant Center require linking to specific products, which can make them challenging to implement. Now, Google has introduced a new promotion type called "Sale Event," which is not tied to individual products. Instead, it can be used to advertise general sales, like "All items discounted up to 70% off" or "Special discount: 10% off on golf bags.""
For more details, check out this help page.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.