Sadly, UK Panama advertisers cannot advertise on US Panama unless you create a US-based account and vice-versa, as Webmaster World reports. Within the country is another story, as Search Engine Round table suggests:

“To target prospective customers by state, province, or territory:

1. Click the Specific Regions button. The Target By dropdown list is displayed.
2. Select State/Province/Territory. The states, provinces, and territories within your market are listed below.
3. Select the regions to target.

- To target specific states, provinces or territories, click the checkboxes next to the regions.

- To target all states, provinces or territories, click the checkbox next to States/Provinces/Territories above the list.

To target prospective customers by city and surrounding area:

1. Click the Specific Regions button. The Target By dropdown list is displayed.
2. Select City and Surrounding Area. The search panel appears below.
3. Search for the cities and surrounding areas to target.

- To search for cities and surrounding areas within a state, province, or territory, click the State/Province/Territory button and select an area from the dropdown list.

- To search for cities and surrounding areas near a specific ZIP/Postal code, click the ZIP/Postal Code button, and then enter the ZIP/Postal code and the radius (in miles) around that ZIP/Postal code that you want to search.

4. Click the Search button. A list of cities and surrounding areas appears below.

5. Click the checkboxes that correspond to the cities and surrounding areas to target. The Map View tab displays the selected cities and surrounding areas. The Targeted Regions tab lists your selections.

6. To target additional cities and surrounding areas in another state or near a different ZIP/Postal code, run the search again.”

Go to Yahoo Marketing solutions for more on Geo Targetting like Creating Campaigns, Viewing Performance Graphs, Viewing Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword Lists etc.

Yahoo over here.

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Resetting Your Geo-targeting Panama Market

A Webmaster at SERoundTable reports a mail he received which says Yahoo! Has begun experimenting with Panama in UK.

Announcing the testing of Panama, Yahoo's contextual search advertising platform in UK, the letter said, "We constantly test new implementations and matching technologies. To help ensure we launch our new ranking model successfully we have started running a limited test across our UK advertiser listings in which the display order of Sponsored Search listings in some keyword markets is based on factors other than bid."

The date is tentative though it will probably happen in the 2nd quarter. "Our new Sponsored Search system will be rolled out in the UK soon, beginning with advertiser migration later this quarter. We will be contacting you with more specific information as the rollout date approaches."

The complete mail detailing Yahoo! Panama's launch in UK can be read at PPC.

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Yahoo! Begins Experimenting Panama In UK

Not as easy as ABC, but a little more systematic than that is the process of converting Google AdWords Campaign into Yahoo Panama. GotAds gives a list of uncomplicated steps for those interested.

In one of Yahoo's posts, it said, "We offer a courtesy upload of up to 1500 keywords for new accounts. Bulk uploading is a feature that is only usually available to gold tier clients and above. However, we would be more than happy to convert the exported .csv file from your Google Desktop Editor utility into our format and upload the converted data into your account for you. Simply send a support request email from within your account (via the “Customer Support” link), attach the .csv file to it, and we will handle the conversion/upload for you."Some users claim, Panama platform does not support plurals of keywords. So far, all's been smooth.

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Translating Google AdWords To Yahoo! Panama

The new Google AdWords Account Snapshot Beta is so much inspired by the Yahoo! Panama’a admin that it looks like a copy. It has been reported by Dan London and Loren Baker.

Coming from Google, this is a nice compliment for Panama. As per originality, it has never been a concern for the search engines. In fact, much worse had happened when Yahoo!, MSN and Google were experimenting with sponsored ad placements.  

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New Google AdWords Interface Inspired By Panama

Yahoo! New ad serving system Panama bagged a big catch today, reports Market Watch. Yahoo! has entered into a multi-year agreement to provide all the advertising for Viacom's Web sites, including sponsored search and contextual ads.

The agreement shuts Google out of at least 33 of Viacom's most-important online entertainment sites, including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com, comedycentral.com and BET.com. Financial terms of the deal, which could be expanded to 140 more sites, were not disclosed.

Just last month Google was sued by Viacom for copyright violation. Actually this decision of Yahoo! has not raised many eyebrows as Google would have been the last option on Viacom's list.

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Yahoo! Panama Bags Viacom Ad Deal

Panama was launched amid huge expectation, both on the part of Yahoo! and publishers. Yahoo! was fast losing out in the search and advertisement market to Google. Publishers, who still hadn’t lost hope with Yahoo!’s failure to launch Panama still hoped for some wonder product.

The new ad program was launched on February 5. In less than two month of the launch, the rate of clicks on Yahoo! ads have gone up by 10%. According to a post at Bloomberg, click-through-rates on Yahoo! ads rose by 5 % within the first week of launch and reached 9% in the second week. The data is provided by ComScore.

The increase in click rates may also bring about a 5% increase in Yahoo!’s quarterly sales. In the beginning of this month we reported about Encouraging Initial Feedback for Panama.

According to UBS AG analyst Ben Schachter “It's just working quicker and better than people had expected." In fact, Yahoo! stock has already gained 23 percent and the shares have risen by 10 cents.

Though Yahoo! would be too pleased with the early harvest, Google has not lost any market share so far. On the contrary, Google’s share of the US market has gone from 42% to 48% in February. The net sales of Google may be around $12 billion while the figures are far lower at $5.47 billion. So at this point of time, Yahoo! would be hoping that the growth rate continues for a longer period of time.

Get a better insight about Yahoo! Panama.

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Panama Surge Continues: 20% Revenue Growth Projected!

Yahoo’s Panama has been quite a success in USA. So much so that it was seen as Yahoo’s dark horse which will single handedly narrow the gap with Google. Though, that is less likely to happen anticipation for the new platform across the Atlantic, in Europe has not dampened.

Jensense has reported that Panama will be launched in UK/Europe Q02, which is within three months after March, 2007. The supposed source of the information is Andrew Buckman – EU Product Director for Yahoo Search Marketing – who spoke at Seodays. Jensense also informs that YPN will follow Panama but with a time lag.  

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Panama To be Launched In UK/Europe Within Three Months!

Barry on Search Engine Roundtable has informed about a  WebmasterWorld thread which inquires the possibility of achieving a perfect 5/5 quality score in Yahoo!'s  Panama Platform.

ClickSpark on WebmasterWorld asks:
 In the new Panama platform, as you know the Quality index is a giant factor in ad performance and traffic. It took me years to get a handle on Google's and now Yahoo's seems even more crazy. I have hundreds of ad groups, and the best I can find is a 4/5 quality index. I have groups with 15% CTR that are 3/5's. Has anyone gotten a 5/5? Is this reserved for the big companies in Yahoo's good graces?

A reply to the query says:
I've got several groups with 5/5, but can't find any bids dropping.

Another one states:
I am still on the old system (in the UK), but there is a quality column. I have a couple of 5/5 keywords, but also some that have 1/5 and CTRs of 20%+!

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5/5 Quality Score In Yahoo! Search Marketing

Finally, Yahoo! has a reason to celebrate. Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch has reported that initial results for Yahoo! Panama has been encouraging. The new ad platform has performed well for the big marketers and provided quality results to searchers too.

Last week, we saw results from Avenue A | Razorfish that supported this. Among that agency's clients, search impressions were up an average of 5 percent, cost per click (CPC) prices were down an average of 6 percent, with clickthrough rates up an average of 10 percent.

Positive feedback has also been provided by earch and media management firm SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets' research arm. The new Quality Index that Yahoo! launched with the platform has been appreciated too. It has enabled marketers to increase their rank with lower CPCs and achieve higher clickthrough rates too. “This has been especially true for large consumer marketers with recognizable brands, Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, told SEW.”

Among SearchIgnite's Fortune 500 brands, clickthrough rates rose significantly, from 2.3 percent pre-Panama to 4.4 percent afterward, while CPCs have dropped 24 percent overall, from $0.75 to $0.57. The effect can be seen on brand terms, where previous competition with affiliates and aggregators may have driven up costs. On those terms, CPCs have fallen 24 percent, from $0.21 to $0.16. On non-brand terms, CPCs fell 20 percent, from $1.37 to $1.10.

It seems to be good news all around for Yahoo! Read the full post here.  

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Panama Gets Encouraging Initial Feedback: Things Looking Up For Yahoo!

With the end of 2006 Yahoo! officially uncovered the commonly known Panama Update. Since that time the accounts are being upgraded from the older systems to this fresh system. Not all the accounts have been upgraded, however, it is expected the task would be full and finally accomplished by the end of march, approximately. Yahoo! Panama is definitely a welcome change.

Yahoo! Panama is surely a great improvement as compared to the previous one. A higher quality of searchers is unquestionably what Yahoo! Panama aims at. The new interface and ranking algorithm may involve a little bit of adjusting on the advertisers side. Scott on SEO blog has written an article, Yahoo Panama – Pros and Cons where he explains the benefits of Yahoo! Panama update:

• Previously you were stuck with only one live ad for any given phrase; now you can create multiple ads for a given ad group.
• Ad approval is now instant for most ads and keywords. While there is still a “pending approval” process for some sets of phrases, in many cases your ad changes and keyword additions are now instant.
• Under the new Yahoo Panama the options are much more sophisticated. For example, there is an option for blocking entire continents for your ad campaigns.
• The geo targeting options have also expanded to allow for more specific ad targeting. Advertisers now have the ability to target specific states and provinces – a feature previously unavailable.

Geo-targeting is one of the most preferred feature update of Yahoo Panama. PPC Advertising blog explains this as, “works by locating a user by his/her IP address or geo-specific terms in his/her search query. It applies both to the content network and the regular search network. Advertisers can choose to target an entire market region (the US and English speaking Canada) or regions. Regional targeting is broken further into either state/province/territory targeting or targeting by DMA”

Every coin has a flipside and so does Yahoo! Panama update. Most of the issues are relatively minor and should not be a major cause of concern for advertisers on top of their campaigns. The chief flaws occurs when one account is transferred from the previous system into the newly updated system. Scott gives an insight on the flipsides of Yahoo! Panama Update.

• Once your account has been transferred, the new system will not log any of the old system historical data. While this information is still accessible by logging into the old interface (which is made read only), it would certainly make more sense if stats were available under the new account login.
• Another issue campaign tracking. After the switch has been made, as long as you do not change any tracking settings everything should continue to work as normal; once you adjust the analytics or tracking options, you will need to replace your tracking code with a new piece of code provided by Yahoo.
• There have been some reports that after the account transition some ad titles, descriptions, and even keywords, have been disrupted.

PPC Marketing Guide says that though the ability to have multiple ads in Yahoo! Panama is the best feature, but Yahoo! has not included conversion rate into their ad statistics.
 The fields Yahoo currently reports on are:

• Ad Name
• Editorial Status
• Display Rate (%)
• Quality Index
• Impressions
• CTR (%)
• Clicks

Although you can tell which message is more appealing to your audience, has a higher click through rate, you don’t know if that message is costing you more that another message with a lower click through rate.

Yahoo! would now be able match upto Google's AdWords. Beanstalk says, “this is a great step forward for Yahoo! (at least until Google and Microsoft upgrade their engines and once again move ahead). More importantly, this is a great step for advertisers who were, until now, frustrated with the differences in capabilities between what they should do with Ad Words vs. what they could do with Yahoo! Search Marketing.”

Steps required in each campaign in Yahoo!
1.Log into your account. You will be presented with your account dashboard.
2.Click on the name of the campaign you wish to change
3.Click on “Edit Campaign” in the top right.
4.Click “Edit” at the top right of the “Campaign General Information” box.
5.Change the account name.
6.Click “Save Changes”.
7.Then click “Dashboard” to return to where you were.
Google AdWords:
1.Log into your account. You will be presented with the “All campaigns” view.
2.Click the checkbox beside the campaign you wish to rename and click “Edit Campaign”.
3.Enter a new campaign name.
4.Click “Save Changes” (also brings you back to where you were).

Not trying to project a negative image of Yahoo! Panama update, it is a job well performed. However, take a closer look! It takes seven step to perform a campaign in yahoo! And it takes Google just four. The multiple campaign edits might just frustrate the advertisers. Renaming the Google campaigns at one stance takes three step and one additional step for each campaign. But in Yahoo! These seven steps are required for each and every campaign.

The procedure might still be long but Yahoo! Panama update is attracting a lot of prospective advertisers. Getting around the new interface is a big improvement. The daily chore of managing a Yahoo! Search campaign will not be such a chore anymore. 

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Yahoo! Panama: What Everybody Ought To Know About It

Data released by comScore indicates a tremendous hike in the number of search advertisements which were clicked at the time of initial week of the new Yahoo Search Marketing Panama ranking & Quality Index roll out.

A report published by Reuters:

Data collected by Internet usage measuring firm comScore Networks showed that the number of Yahoo search users who clicked on ads — known as the click-through rate — rose 5 percent in the first week after the new system's debut and 9 percent in the second week.

"They have definitely narrowed the gap" with Google, comScore Vice President James Lamberti said. "Just a small change like that in hundreds of millions of clicks is going to be a huge opportunity to make Yahoo money."

Yahoo! Is still way behind Google AdWords in monetizing search, however, if the scores keep going higher then Yahoo! will gain advertisers fast thus increasing their revenue.

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Yahoo! Gains From Panama Advertising System

The second part of  Yahoo Local Advertising Options, Post-Panama at ClickZ has some fine tips on local search marketing. Patricia Hursh, the author of this writeup explains intricately which ad product is best for your online marketing needs. 

For sponsored search Patricia recommends, “geotargeted Sponsored Search campaigns for Internet-savvy local businesses, regional firms, Web-based businesses, and national chains, franchises, and dealerships. Really, any business — local or not — wanting to present different messages or offers to searchers in various locations can benefit from Yahoo's geotargeted Sponsored Search.”

However this approach is applicable only those who are ready to accept the challenges of a full brown PPC advertising campaign. The key point is that you have to keep working on the advertising solution. Hiring the services of a professionalized agency is also a good idea.

According to Patricia, Yahoo! Local Listings are chiefly designed for small and local businesses that are serving consumers in a focused area. Patricia says, “I recommend Local Listings for marketers who desire a simplified approach and appreciate the flat monthly fee. This solution eliminates the need to manage campaigns, keywords, bids, and budgets. Furthermore, the contact information and map associated with a Local Listing makes it particularly well suited for marketers wanting to make their phones ring or drive customers into their physical stores.”

Further on, the best way to ensure that you are within reach of people who search on Yahoo! is by testing geotargeted Sponsored Search ads and Featured Local Listings. Another step essential to increase visibility is by migrating from Yahoo!'s Local Sponsored Search Product to either a geotargeted PPC account or a Featured Local Listing.

Finally Patricia sums up the article, “Will local search advertising ever be as well understood as newspaper or yellow page ads? It's just a matter of time. Won't it be nice when the next local business owner you meet at a cocktail party wants to discuss Yahoo Local Listings?

Search engines certainly haven't cracked the small business marketing code yet. Stay tuned.”

Indeed a captivating post. Catch the complete article at Clickz

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Yahoo! Local Ad Options At New Panama

Barry Schwartz has a post about a Webmasterworld thread where Yahoo! representative, YahooSarah, phas explained the Quality Index Score system introduced in Panama. The represenatative says:

Remember that more than click-through rate influences the quality of an ad: The quality of an ad is determined relative to other ads displayed at the same time by both its expected performance going forward and its historical performance. Historical performance data was not purged on February 5, but as time passes, the data generated after the launch of the new ranking model will have the strongest influence on ad quality calculations.

The time it takes to take both expected and historical performance into account to measure ad quality depends on the volume of searches related to a keyword. Keywords with lots of daily searches often generate enough data in a relatively short period of time until historical performance is a stronger factor for ad quality within that marketplace.

And no, the data used to determine ad quality is not “purged” at the beginning of a new month. Loren Baker has a comprehensive post about the fall out of the modifications. Read it here.

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More On Yahoo! Ad Quality Score

Florian Reichling reports that her Yahoo! account went offline and can't be restored, ever, after using the bulk upload feature.her account displayed a message:

The account sempunch.com [my account number] is not displaying ads as of 2/5/07 2:04 PM. This may be because the account has reached its daily spending limit, its balance has been depleted, or your company’s account administrator has set the account status to off. But none of this had happened.

After she contacted Yahoo!, she was redirected to the tech guys. Whatever. the bottom line is the update she posted:

UPDATE: I was just told that my account cannot be brought back online and is lost – so be careful about using the bulk upload tool!

Now, that is not the wonderful user review that Yahoo! would have liked for their newly launched Panama. Florian reached her conclusion by saying:

No wonder Google dominates this market – their #1 competitor in the space is utterly incompetent.

Yahoo! has to get its act in place before many others think the same.  

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Bug In Panama Bulk Upload?

Panama, Yahoo!'s new ad ranking system, was launched yesterday. Highly anticipated before by both advertisers and the company itself, the initial feedback is a bag of mixed feelings. The new system has been appreciated by users for the easy to use digital dashboard as well as tools for better insight into the campaign.
But Yahoo! has also drawn flak for introducing the "quality" factor into ad placement calculations, which is surprisingly followed by both Google and MSN for long now. Previously, higher bids in Yahoo! ensured higher placements. But with the introduction of the quality feature, waters have become murkier for advertisers.

However, according to a post at Search Engine Land, Tim Mayer, senior director, global web search at Yahoo! has said that:

The system is going to cause advertisers to work harder to make their listing more relevant, just as SEO's have been doing in the algorithmic section for a long time,

Equally valid point of view would be that the Yahoo! guys pondered "How is Google making as much as 4.5 cents to 5 cents while we make a meager 2.5 to 3." Allowing for the long time that Yahoo! took to notice the huge gap, they discovered that the answer lay in high quality, relevant ads.

Therefore, Panama makes it tougher for advertisers to be placed high unless they are really good. That is good news for searchers who will not be subjected to useless advertisements which have been paid for very highly. This is also good news for advertisers as this will help them raise conversion rates by forcing them to create more relevant ads.

Searchers can look forward to better results but they will have to use narrow, specific search terms. Time Mayer also says that relevant sponsored results will make "people will start looking at the results more as a whole, we hope," not as two distinct sets of results.         

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The Mixed Initial Reviews Of Panama

Starting around 3 p.m. Pacific time on Monday, a group of Yahoo executives will begin shuttling among three war rooms at the company's search marketing unit here.

Reports NY Times. "here" is Burbank, California. And the event is launch of Panama, Yahoo!'s new ad system, one of the most significant products to be launched by the company in last few years. Though Google has a huge lead in the lucrative advertising market, Panama is Yahoo!'s best shot at closing the gap.
Anticipating the launch of Panama, Google has raised the commission rates for both its AdSense and AdWords program by $150. On Yahoo!'s part the project has been much delayed reflecting the slow pace of reaction that has lately characterized Yahoo!. Though second in overall market share, the gap between first ranked Google and second ranked Yahoo! is significantly wide. Yahoo! grew complacent after its takeover of Overture in 2003 paid off good returns.

It took some time for Yahoo! to notice how Google was changing the online adscape with its continuous improvisations. However, Panama is much anticipated  by both advertisers and the company itself. Though the first part of the program went into operation in mid October, next few weeks would be crucial as the old system is not completely defunked. As Panama slowly replaces the old system, problems can crop up.

Panama brings a host of new features to advertisers, such as ability to aim ads geographically and digital dashboard to manage the campaigns. These features are already made available by both Google and MSN. So effectively, Yahoo! is just catching up.

What's new is a "quality index" which provides advertisers with insight as to how an ad will be ranked by the system and some other sophisticated tools that the company has not spoken about yet. Tim Cadogan, vice president of Yahoo! Search Marketing said, “Panama is a foundation for us to start sewing together all our advertising assets,” probably meaning audio, video and mobile ads.  

According to the NY Times report,

the company ran a test in which searches originating on the West Coast ran the new ad ranking system. The team started at 3 a.m., and by lunchtime, the engineers gathered in the war rooms, many with bags under their eyes, and appeared satisfied things were running smoothly.

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Much Awaited Yahoo! Panama Launched

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool will not work once Yahoo! stops supporting it and moves to the new Panama tool. However, Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool will have some important and valid historical data. There are reports from DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld Forums that the tool is not working. In addition the related tools are also showing errors. The tool of DigitalPoint in Overture column is showing "No data for phrase".

Error is also showing for  SEO Book's tool giving message “Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to www.inventory.overture.com:80 in /home/awall19/tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/clsOvertureSuggest.php on line 37”.

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Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool Defunct?

Search Engine Land has reported that the Wall Street Journal has given a detailed article regarding reviews and opinions on Yahoo!'s earnings call, on experiences with Panama platform migration. 

The positive comments include:

Chris Wallace, vice president of media for search-marketing firm iCrossing Inc., whose clients include Coca-Cola Co., says, "Our experience has been positive, in part because we do a significant amount of due diligence prior to migration" to the new system. Veronica Muth, a marketing coordinator for Telogis Inc., a fleet-management services and software firm in Costa Mesa, Calif., that spends about $3,000 a month on Yahoo search ads, agrees about the experience. "The migration process was easy," says Ms. Muth, who attended a Yahoo seminar about the upgrade for advertisers last week.

Search Engine Land also reports:

Rob Montalbine says technical glitches prevented the Hawthorne, N.J., relocation-services company where he is Internet-marketing manager from accessing Yahoo's search-ad system for most of three days after its upgrade. "With an aggressive search-marketing campaign and matching budget, three days is a millennium," says Mr. Montalbine, whose company buys ads linked to 14,000 keywords through Yahoo and at times has spent more than $7,000 monthly on search ads.

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Yahoo!'s Panama Migration Reviewed

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting about search marketing advertisers in United Kingdom have got mails from Yahoo! that lowest bid for some keywords have been decreased to 5P. But there are some keywords whose lowest bid will remain 10p. New prices will take affect from 19th January, 2007. Some are saying that lowest bid of 10p will not change for some 150k terms such as finance terms. Besides United Kingdom there have been changes in bids in Germany, Switzerland and Austria also.

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Yahoo! Lowers Minimum Bids For Some Keywords In UK

Recently Marty Weintraub reported on his official blog that Yahoo! has decided to incapacitate some of Panama Geo-Targeting features as they are nonfunctional. The astonishing part is that it is not everyday Yahoo! like web giants acknowledge their faults especially since Panama Geo-Targeting was anticipated to have a feature improvement.

Some time back Marty covered that Panama Geo-Targeting was a pain. He said, “It's official! After 2 days, 4 customer support calls, and a lost night's sleep dreaming of fishhooks in my finger, Yahoo has admitted to me that Panama Geo-Targeting does not work in some cases "during the transition process." They will fix it later. This dirty little secret was not understood by the first 3 customer support techs I talked to at Yahoo! over the last 36 hours. The information is not in the Legacy to Panama upgrade website. My guess is that the techs now are now being better briefed. The last one I talked to today said that Yahoo! was 'receiving calls regarding Geo-Targeting issues.' Let me tell you, it's a time-waster if you need Geo-Targeting for locally tagged keywords.”

So finally after confirming that Panama Geo-Targeting is not functioning the right way, Yahoo! has decided to pull it down.  

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Panama Geo-Targeting Disabled