Shopify has expanded its Promoted Placements beta so approved developers can earn merchant-funded Shop Campaigns commissions on top of Shopify’s base rate. The change, announced in an October 27, 2026 developer changelog, applies to eligible purchases driven through Catalog API search results.
The incentive attached to those results is the real shift. A shopping agent can receive product information alongside a commission rate that varies by product. That gives its developer a financial consideration when deciding how to build and fund product recommendations.
Access remains invite-led. Commission earning applies only to search_catalog, only through enrolled saved catalogs, and only to products from Shopify merchants. This is a specific monetization program within Shopify’s shopping infrastructure, not a commission offer for every agent that can access its catalog.
How the Combined Commission Works
Shopify’s Promoted Placements documentation lists a Developer Preview base rate of 0.3%, or 30 basis points, on attributed purchases of eligible products.
Merchants running Shop Campaigns can fund an additional commission. When they have external platforms enabled, the Catalog API is included among those platforms. Shopify converts their campaign settings into a commission and adds it to the base rate.
| Component | Published terms | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify base rate | 0.3% on attributed purchases of eligible products | Provides the baseline commission |
| Merchant-funded addition | Varies according to Shop Campaigns settings | Some products can earn a higher total rate |
| Combined rate | Returned in placement.commission.percentage.value | Developers should read the rate for each promoted variant |
| Higher-rate conditions | Active campaign in the US, in USD; purchase completed in Shop | A higher rate depends on more than product eligibility |
The API returns one combined percentage. Developers should not add another 0.3% to the value they receive.
Shopify’s documentation illustrates the response with a total rate of 1.5%:
{
"placement": {
"type": "affiliate",
"commission": {
"percentage": {
"value": 1.5
}
}
}
}
This example describes the response structure; it is not an executed API request or a universal rate. Here, 1.5 means 1.5%, already including Shopify’s base commission. The placement.type remains affiliate, including when Shop Campaigns supplies the additional commission.
For a simple illustration, $100 of eligible attributed purchase value would generate $0.30 at the base rate, compared with $1.50 at the example’s combined rate. That calculation assumes the applicable purchase and attribution conditions are met. It is not a forecast of developer earnings.
My view is that the per-product field matters more than the example percentage. A developer cannot safely treat this as a flat-rate affiliate program. Reporting and revenue estimates need to use the returned rate for the relevant item, and Shopify says preview rates may change before general availability.
Shop Is Part of the Higher-Rate Purchase Path
Shopify says buyers clicking a product with merchant-funded commission are sent to Shop at shop.com. Its documentation also specifies that earning above the base rate requires the buyer to complete the purchase in Shop, either through the mobile app or the website. The additional Shop Campaigns commission applies only to products in an active US campaign, in USD. (Changelog, program documentation)
Those conditions make the purchase destination commercially important. The developer is earning for an eligible attributed purchase, not simply for displaying a result or generating a click.
I would treat destination handling as part of the commission integration, not a cosmetic link choice. Shopify explicitly tells developers to send buyers to the variant URL exactly as returned. Replacing that URL with a convenient product-page link would depart from the documented attributed flow.
This also gives the update a second strategic effect: merchant-funded incentives support discovery through outside agents while routing the resulting shopping activity into Shop.
Eligibility Depends on the Organization and Saved Catalog
The changelog’s assurance that no action is required applies to developers whose organizations and catalogs are already enrolled. It does not mean an arbitrary Catalog API integration starts earning automatically.
Shopify’s setup documentation describes several separate requirements:
- An existing Global Catalog integration: Promoted Placements extends that integration.
- An approved organization: Access is invite-led, with developers onboarded from a waitlist in batches.
- Accepted program terms: Approval makes a Get paid action available in the Dev Dashboard, where the organization completes enrollment.
- Commission enabled on the saved catalog: Saved catalogs created after enrollment have Earn commission enabled by default. Earlier catalogs require it to be turned on.
- Required disclosures: Experiences using the catalog must include the program’s disclosures before commission earning is enabled.
The organization then passes that saved catalog’s catalog.catalog_id in its search_catalog requests. Requests without an affiliate-enabled catalog return organic variants only.
Product eligibility is another boundary. Shopify says products from non-Shopify merchants, identified by gid://catalog/... IDs, cannot earn commission and never include a placement object. A product’s presence in the broader Global Catalog therefore does not make it commission-eligible.
Access, fields and behavior remain subject to Developer Preview changes. These published terms describe the program’s mechanics, not independently measured earnings or conversion performance.
What Developers Need to Handle in Search Results
An enrolled integration can keep using its existing search flow, but it needs to preserve the information that makes attribution and reporting work.
According to Shopify’s documentation, the practical implementation is to:
- Include the enrolled saved catalog’s
catalog.catalog_idinsearch_catalog. - Identify promoted variants through their
placementobject. - Read the total percentage from
placement.commission.percentage.value. - Send buyers through the attributed variant URL Shopify returns.
- Keep the required disclosures in the shopping experience.
The catalog’s server-managed configuration determines whether Shopify blends promoted placements into ranked search results. That detail matters because the paid-placement mechanism already operates at the retrieval layer, before an agent necessarily writes its final recommendation.
Frequently Asked Questions
4 questions
1What Is Shopify’s Base Commission Rate?
The published Developer Preview base rate is 0.3%, or 30 basis points, on attributed purchases of eligible products. Shopify says preview rates may change.
