Yahoo Opens Panama To All Search Marketers

Yahoo opened registration for its highly anticipated PANAMA Search Engine Marketing platform to all advertisers. With the new platform, Yahoo's paid search offerings are expected to become far more competitive with those of market leader Google.

Among the main features are new geo-targeting capabilities and analytics, as well as instantaneous review of ad copy. In the past, it took Yahoo between 24 and 48 hours to approve ads.

Yahoo began inviting select advertisers onto the Panama platform in October. In July, Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel announced that the overhaul, which was initially scheduled for the third quarter of this year would be delayed until the end of 2006, and that advertisers should prepare to use the system starting in 2007.

Despite the end-of-year rollout, it's possible that many advertisers will wait to switch over to the new platform until the end of the holiday shopping season. Most marketers are not looking to launch today and they won't utilize this until early 2007.

The Panama platform will provide a jumping-off point for Yahoo to integrate its search and display ad businesses, something that Google has already done. The search and display needs to be integrated, so it's easier for a marketer to run an integrated campaign across Yahoo's properties.

The rollout is coming at the end of a challenging year for Yahoo. The company has failed to catch up to Google in search market share, and has floundered in attempts to claim a bigger stake in the burgeoning social media space. Earlier this year, talks to acquire social networking site Facebook for more than $1 billion reportedly stalled.

Update by Sunny: Well, the new features of this Search Engine would boost click-through rates on paid search campaigns. I’m really bullish on Panama and I hope it matches to my expectations !!