Will Yahoo’s Project Panama make this search marketer’s life easier?

This recent article in the New York Times discusses the long-anticipated launch of Yahoo’s new paid search software - Project Panama.  

“Project Panama” is the term being used in the SEM community to define the complete restructuring of the ancient Overture DirecTraffic Center (DTC) which falls way behind Google in terms of usability and campaign management effectiveness. The new ad platform will also seek to improve ad targeting of Yahoo paid search results by incorporating ranking criteria such as a keyword’s relevance to its related ad copy and landing page. These factors, along with the bid amount, will determine where the search ad appears on the search results pages or if the ad appears at all.

More relevant search results will translate into millions of dollars in ad revenue for Yahoo. According to the New York Times, “Yahoo will increase search-advertising revenue at least 20 percent right away - about $125 million in the fourth quarter of this year and $600 million next year.” Wow. I’d say that’s definitely worth the “tens of millions” that Yahoo has invested in the tool.

All I can say is, it can ONLY be a good thing. Project Panama is Yahoo’s promise of redemption for a clunky user interface that can make managing a campaign a frustrating chore. I hope to see some of the features I know and love in Google:

• Assigning multiple ads to the same keyword list
• Assigning multiple display URLs to the same campaign
• Better reporting and more historical campaign data (currently Yahoo’s campaign data only goes back three months.
• An easy way to download bulk listings, make changes and then upload them in bulk (without using a third-party tool)
• Better campaign results are always nice too.

So that’s just some of the stuff that would make my life easier.

Add comment June 1st, 2006