If MSN Adcenter is the red-headed stepchild of the paid search family, then is Yahoo! Search Marketing that slightly sozzled uncle you have to put up with once a year at Christmas? Spurious and obvious analogies aside, I know the lesser two rivals of the Adwords behemoth tend to be humored as opposed to embraced by most when it comes to PPC.

Still, we received an email this morning from the bods at Yahoo! Search Marketing informing us that the first half of 2008 will see them scrap fixed minimum keyword bids.

As the private and confidential email states (but we did get permission to blog it in its entirety here):

Variable minimum bids Beginning in the first half of 2008, we plan to change our system so that minimum bids will no longer be fixed for all keywords; they may be higher or lower than $0.10. Minimum bids may vary by keyword, ad group and advertiser. EWS 4.0.0 is configured to work with variable minimum bids. If you do not upgrade to EWS 4.0.0, you may not have full control over your ads and keywords.

There was quite a bit of appreciative umming and ahhing at the idea of smaller businesses being able to lower costs on long tail keywords within their niche. 

Whilst those were our initial reactions prior to us giddily trying to get the word out, I'm sure you fine people will have many more cogent and lucid thoughts.

It's good to share....