It’s Official: Yahoo! to Rock Out with “Panama” Update
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Written By Reprise Media | May 8, 2006 | Share This
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It’s all over our internets today: Yahoo! announced plans to roll out a major overhaul of their Yahoo! Search Marketing advertising system sometime in the Third Quarter. The word comes as they unveil APIs for use with the upgrade, with hopes that advertisers and “tool providers” will have plenty of time to get used to the interface before the changes actually occur.
It looks like everyone will have at least a few months’ leeway. According to the press release (reprinted in this immaculately detailed Search Engine Watch post), Yahoo! is nearly finished with Phase 1 of the project, “building the core data platform and technologies.” But one look at the list of features Yahoo! intends to debut makes this no small feat.
Yahoo! sent out an email to advertisers (also found at SEW) that includes brief descriptions of new or improved YSM capabilities: an “Easy-to-Use’ Control Panel” (so easy-to-use, they listed it twice!), a new “Geo-Targeting” feature that would allow better control over locally relevant campaigns, and “Ad Testing,” for assessing “multiple versions of an ad” so that advertisers can easily “choose to shift impressions to the ad that performs best.”
The ad ranking system is also in for some big changes, as expected. And, as expected, Yahoo! will follow Google’s lead, not quite letting on how their rankings will work (although click-through rate will almost certainly be a factor). According to the New York Times (registration req’d), the improved efficiency of the new system could immediately generate a 20 percent rise in Yahoo!’s ad revenue.
That is, assuming it works correctly; speaking to NYT, our own Peter Hershberg alludes to some of Yahoo’s recent “bumps and bruises” with regard to the availability of campaign data under Yahoo!’s current system. We’ve definitely got our fingers crossed, though, and seeing as Yahoo! reports “overwhelmingly positive feedback,” we’ve got reason to be optimistic.
Related: First ‘Panama’ whispers, Yahoo’s response.
Topics: Yahoo! |