Yahoo! set to unveil Panama next week

by Andrew McCormick, Media Week 30-May-07, 10:00

LONDON - Yahoo! is set to roll out Panama, the UK version of its search platform, next week, Media Week can reveal.

Panama is Yahoo!'s attempt to muscle in on Google's 75% share of the paid-search market, which accounts for more than half of all online advertising in the UK -£1.2bn in total last year - according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Panama is a paid-for search platform, the system that determines search rankings and through which advertisers and agencies manage their paid-for search campaigns.

For the first time, Yahoo! will include "relevancy factors", as well as how much money companies bid on keywords in determining the ranking of search results.
Media agencies and advertisers have been given an entirely new system on which to manage their campaigns.
Yahoo! told Media Week that it has been employing more than 400 full-time engineers to work on Panama for two and a half years and that 1,000 advertisers have been consulted in the process.
Richard Firminger, regional sales director northern Europe for Yahoo! search marketing, said that roll-out was imminent.
Agencies and advertisers said the launch of Panama was originally scheduled for this week, but has been delayed until next week.
Firminger added that the process of transferring accounts to Panama may not be straightforward.
He said: "There will be issues as we're the only search provider to attempt anything like this, but we'll sit with agencies for days on end if necessary to help every agency through every individual campaign."
Firminger said that the previous infrastructure had been in place since 1998 and that it was in need of change. "The old system wasn't a friend of small businesses," he said. "So we've introduced a whole new system to attract that market."
He added: "We've had a multitude of comments from major advertisers and agencies, but the overall feedback has been positive."
Panama's tools for small businesses include e-mail alerts, which notify campaign managers when their money is running low.
It offers geo-targeting, allowing companies to target their campaigns in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and eight regions of England, rather than waste money on irrelevant areas.
Firminger would not be drawn on what aspirations Yahoo! has for Panama, saying only that the target was "a significant increase in market share". Microsoft was the latest to challenge Google with the launch of AdCenter last August.