Yahoo! Drops Minimum Monthly Spend

Had an email last night from the Yahoo! Search Marketing Team that said they were eliminating their $20 minimum monthly spend for pay-per-click advertising campaigns. That's good news to small businesses that were trying to advertise in low-cost or niche markets.

The text of the email:

We've listened to your feedback and are happy to announce that we've eliminated the $20 monthly minimum spending requirement for Sponsored Search. Previously, all Sponsored Search advertisers were required to spend at least $20 a month in click-through charges. Now, you can choose to spend as much or as little as you like, with no minimum to meet.

Thank you for being a Sponsored Search advertiser. We appreciate your business and hope this change makes advertising with us even easier. As always, we value your feedback, so if you have any questions please contact us using the support request form within your account.

While it doesn't take many clicks to build up $20 in clicks, I've worked with several small, local businesses that simply couldn't do it. They had great conversion rates on the traffic that they did get, but the minimum monthly spend ended up costing them more than what they could manage.

The move is a good one. It's unlikely to cost Yahoo! much, because the majority of their advertisers already have no problem meeting that minimum. Add in a potential slew of new advertisers that will spend $5 or $10 a month on inexpensive niche phrases and you could see a nice jump in revenue. (And as those advertisers find out that PPC advertising works and expand their campaigns, Yahoo! will benefit even more.)