Now here's news that you don't hear on too regular of a basis...MediaPost Publications reports that keyword prices were actually down in the first quarter of this year. DouleClick's "cost-per-keyword" rate is figured by factoring the average cost-per-click with the overall volume of clicks to determine the average cost of purchasing a keyword over the course of a month. Not surprisingly, the cost-per-keyword rate reached a high of $59 during the peak of the holiday season in December, but has since dropped back down to $30 per click.

Those figures mesh with a study done last February that found keyword prices slowly following a downward trend as ROI forces bidders to self-regulate their bids. The current low is also speculated to be caused by the after-holiday marketing void that often occurs during the first part of the year.

It's also interesting to note that while the cost-per-keyword index is starting to level out price-wise, the overall number of keywords being bid upon and the overall number of click-throughs being reported remains on a steady rise. That shows that pay-per-click advertisers are embracing concepts like the keyword long-tail in their marketing strategies.