eBay Promoted Listings General Minimum Ad Rate Jumps To 5% For Some Sellers
eBay appears to be testing increasing the minimum Promoted Listings General fixed ad rate to 5% for some sellers ahead of Q4 peak holiday shopping season.
Reports are coming in across social media, YouTube and eBay community forums indicating some sellers are no longer able to set their minimum ad rate at 2%, but with no official announcement from eBay, it's unclear if this is a glitch, a test or an early roll out of a soon to be updated policy.
rayneedsthespace
I have an active Promoted Listings General campaign using a fixed ad rate, not dynamic. The campaign is set to 3%, and many of my existing listings are still running at 3%.
The problem is that when I try to add certain listings to the campaign or lower a listing’s ad rate to 3%, eBay will not allow it. If I enter 3%, I get the error:“Set an ad rate between 5% and 100%.”
I called eBay about this. The representative told me to promote the listing at 5% first, then go into Campaigns afterward and change it back down to 3%. I tried exactly that, but it still does not work. When I go into the campaign and try to change the listing from 5% to 3%, eBay still says the minimum is 5%.
So my campaign itself is still a 3% fixed-rate campaign, and many older listings remain at 3%, but I cannot set some newer or edited listings below 5%.
One post in a reseller group on Facebook shared a screenshot showing exactly the same issue - an error message saying the minimum rate is 5%.
Did eBay change the minimum ad rate? I went to list something and it wouldn't let me list it at 3%. I thought maybe it was just that particular item or its category but I tried to revise several of my listed items and I'm getting the same error. Like WTF eBay? You already take enough!
Reseller and Flipwise founder Justin Glow also posted a video on YouTube saying that the eBay API is returning a "bid percentage is not valid" error for some of his clients, indicating the minimum value is now 5%.
But Glow says not all Flipewise users are impacted and even for those who are, it does not appear to be affecting all of their listings.
Some sellers are speculating eBay may be testing raising the rate based on things like whether the seller has a Store subscription, business vs individual account, item category or price, but unfortunately there isn't enough data yet to make an accurate assessment of what criteria eBay may be using and eBay has not made any public statements about this issue.
The official eBay help page still says the minimum is 2% for General Promoted Listings ads as of October 2, 2026.
However, this wouldn't be the first time that eBay has made a change to Promoted Listings ad rates without notice and didn't update the policy page. The same thing happened in 2024 when eBay raised the minimum ad rate for Promoted Listings General ads using the dynamic pricing strategy from 2% to 5%.
Liz Morton
At that time, eBay also made changes to its Marketing Terms which gave the company much more wiggle room to make future rate changes with less transparency required.
Promoted listings continues to be a significant source of revenue for eBay. In Q2 2026, nearly 1.3 billion of the 2.6 billion total listings on platform used at least one type of advertising, bringing in $570 Million in first party ad revenue. eBay CFO Peggy Alford said the company considers their target of ad revenue reaching 3% of Gross Merchandise Volume only a midterm milestone, not a ceiling, assuring investors that the ad fee machine will continue rolling full steam ahead throughout 2026 and beyond.
What those numbers don't show is how much of the revenue growth came from greater seller demand versus eBay’s expanded attribution rules.
eBay began rolling out a new ad attribution model in smaller markets last year which expanded into the US and Canada in January, charging a Promoted Listings General fee when any buyer clicked the ad within the previous 30 days, even if a different buyer ultimately completed the purchase.
The new attribution model makes more sales eligible for ad fees, but sellers say they haven't seen a commensurate increase in the number of sales or return on investment for their ad spend.
Liz Morton
eBay has not responded to request for comment as of publication. Stay tuned for updates in this developing story and let us know in the comments below if you are seeing Promoted Listings General fixed rates bumped up to a 5% minimum.
