Google Adwords Prices going up

Is it just me or is it a general pattern at the moment that the competition is increasing across all marketing sectors in google adwords and driving the cost of paid marketing up by up to 50% increase in the last year and in some cases even more than this.

Is it genuine increases in competition or is google doing something with their algorithms that are making it more difficult to get a cheap clicks, its a god time to take special care looking at page relevancy and other issues to do with your quality score