Is Yahoo pricing itself out of the PPC business?

[Matt]

Over the past half year or so, I've noticed that Yahoo Search Marketing has really ramped up their demands for minimum bid prices in many accounts I've dealt with. Many cases have seen bid prices go up 3, 4, or 5 times the amount they had started with and were running quite well on. For example, one client had a bid price of approximately $2.75 for a keyword (giving it an average position of between 2-3) suddenly go inactive and have it's minimum bid price ramped up to almost $7.75

I do understand that competition can affect prices, but many of them are jumping too high, too quickly, for this to be simply a competition thing.

We all know Yahoo's predicament over the past year as well, and the conspiracy theorist in me (he appears every so often before I beat him in to remission) wonders if they are trying to increase income in other areas.

Unfortunately, I believe they have lost the price advantage they once held over Google AdWords, not to mention the CPA advantage this resulted in and became a major selling point.

I'm more inclined to suggest MSN AdCenter to a client as a Google AdWords supplement these days.