Google Sets $5 Daily Minimum Budget for Demand Gen Campaigns, Forcing Small Advertisers to Spend More

Google will begin enforcing a $5 per day minimum budget for all Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, aimed at ensuring campaigns generate enough data for its AI to properly optimize during the initial 7 to 14 day “cold start” learning phase. Advertisers running low-budget tests across many hyper-segmented campaigns will be most affected, and existing campaigns under the threshold can keep running until any edit is made, at which point Google will require the budget be raised to save changes. The update also comes ahead of Google's NewFront event on March 23, where new Gemini 3 features are expected to launch within the Google Marketing Platform, further integrating AI across Search, YouTube, and mobile app data.