The pay-per-click market is about to see a new player in the search engine landscape. No surprise, it’s the #3 player in the search engine wars , MSN. MSN keywords program is, however, adopting a slightly different pricing model. It aims to charge users a one-time subscription fee followed by a minimum bid of $0.10 for each click. Advertisers will rank on the sponsored results based on the amount bid, click-through rate, and user profiles like age and gender. They launched it in Singapore first and France will be the next in line to roll-out this program next month. The US can expect a pilot in October this year.

Paid-search is big. According to Piper Jaffray’s research arm, it is estimated that the paid-search market will grow to US$9.9 billion by 2008. Now, small businesses with limited ad budgets can compete for targeted traffic in the search engine quickly and without the wait and expense of hiring a SEO consultant.

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