Yahoo’s much anticipated new pay per click advertising platform named Panama is now live. There were speculations that they would wait until after the holidays but Barry Schwartz who is currently visiting Yahoo Search Marketing headquarters along with other prominent bloggers has reported that Yahoo has officially released the new platform. I was able to get a sneak peak at the new system earlier this year.
As soon as I saw today’s headline, I rushed over to log into a client’s Yahoo Search Marketing account expecting to see the new platform, but did not see anything different. I should have read Barry’s entire post because he informs us that voluntary migration of current customers will happen over next few months and mandatory migration will happen some time after first of the year. So it appears those who are worried that switching to a new platform before the holiday season might have a negative impact on their campaigns can wait until next year before making the transition.
Invites to use the new system will begin as early as next week with testing accounts to be provided. Using the new platform means that you tap into the new user interface. However, the “quality index” factor for ranking ads does not start until some time in Q1 2007. Notifications of this change will be sent out.
Barry has more including screen shots at Search Engine Watch Blog as well as his own raw notes published at Search Engine Roundtable. Andrew Goodman who is also currently visiting Yahoo has a write up as well at Traffick.
