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I have received a couple emails asking me about what Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers are noticing since the change from Overture to Panama.
Don't get me wrong, we covered it a lot at Search Engine Land but there has not been much discussion at the forums on it. Here are the reports I have found on this:
- Preliminary Scorecard: How Effective Is Yahoo's Panama Upgrade?, Search Engine Land
- Yahoo! Panama First Look, Search Marketing Trends
- Feb 2007 Results: Yahoo ‘Panama’ Siezes Back Share From Google, Rimm-Kaufman Group Blog
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread has feedback from four different SEMs all saying that they noticed a drop in volume from Yahoo! Search Marketing since the Panama upgrade.
For me, I think the interface is much better and the account maitenance is somewhat easier. As far as performance, we are down quite a bit from where we were pre-Panama. ROI is similar, but volume is way down.
Our volume is way down too. We are actually at the point of deciding if it's even worth my time to manage Yahoo's campaigns any longer.
I've also noticed an extreme decrease in volume.
Now is this related to the the addition of the Yahoo Panama quality score factors or Panama itself, is hard to answer. But these reports are a bit upsetting.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
Comments:
Vygantas
04/26/2007 11:53 am
I wish Yahoo would suceed and stop loosing money every quarter.
Shawn
04/26/2007 04:39 pm
I have a feeling part of this reflects some Yahoo partners switching to other providers around the same time as the change to Panama.
Tim Dineen
04/27/2007 04:45 am
I suspect the people who are having lower volume issues are either not actively managing their campaigns or have lost traffic for terms where their site/ad was low quality in the first place but they got higher traffic because in the past just bidding high practically guaranteed that. Also wonder how many advertisers have "let it ride" by allowing the system to convert their campaigns but assuming that the previous settings were good enough because they worked at the time. Maybe smaller advertisers just haven't have the time to learn Panama. The barrier to entry for such system is so low but with each upgrade a new layer of complexity just confuses those who aren't suited for managing their own campaigns.