Is Panama Working?

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Is Panama Working?

That's a key question if you are a shareholder or employee of Yahoo (YHOO). comScore published the results of a study they did on click rates pre and post the launch of Panama and here are the results:

Certainly the trend is in the right direction. I have no idea if this order of magnitude gains are something to be excited about or not. I do know that Google's click rates are significantly higher than Yahoo's so a 9% gain is not going to get them parity with Google.

I also know that there are many people in the search marketing business who read this blog. Maybe they have some anecdotal data they can share in the comments.

Non Disclosure - I do not hold a position in YHOO at this time.

Comments (6) | Posted February 26, 2007 in stocks

Comments

I'm working alongside guys transitioning our search campaigns to Panama now, and who attended YHOO's Panama training session last week, some "feedback from the front" :

- 90% of the ~500 folks in attendance had major complaints about their transitions' process and the hassles involved

- YHOO now appears "on par" with GOOG in terms of Panama's targeting options and visibility into reporting

- Panama's new 'rithm factors more than just "Max CPC" into its allocation of rankings -- formerly advertisers spending $50/click could dominate on that facet alone

Posted by: Chris | Feb 26, 2007 12:19:24 PM

9% click thru rates?

That can not be serious, let alone true

Google places nearly 10 paid links per web page

To achieve a 9% (or better!) click thru rate would imply that literally every search result web page gets an ad click

No way, right?

Posted by: Grand Egress | Feb 26, 2007 5:24:30 PM

Hi -- this comment has nothing to do with this post -- though it is an interesting post. Really, I'm just trying to find out the blogger's name!

I work for O'Reilly Media as the Managing Editor of the AOL Developer Community site dev.aol.com/community - and I feature your blog posts in my "NewThisWeek" panel fairly frequently. I'd like to be able to put your name next to the posts I feature, instead of just calling you "A VC".

I mean, I could take a guess at your name from reading the comments, but I'd prefer to be sure! Can you email me?

Posted by: Kevin Farnham | Feb 26, 2007 7:35:46 PM

All I know is, I threw a couple thousand dollars at Yahoo last week to try out the new system. Zero sales. I used the same keywords that I use week in and week out on Google... only difference is, google generates 3 times my adspend in sales. Yahoo, again, generated zero. The big unanswered question for me has always been: why do Yahoo ads not generate sales?

Could it be that Yahoo has trained their users, all these years, not to trust the ads on their site? Whereas google... by their superior popularity algorithm trained their users to trust their advertisers?

BTW... I was a GOTO.com advertiser from WAY BACK... so I had to learn to love Google. But I still see no proof that Yahoo deserves my love.

Posted by: Brian | Feb 26, 2007 9:42:00 PM

We're seeing strong results from Panama, particularly for very large advertisers.

post here:

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2007/03/02/yahoo-panama-google-share-february-2007/

Posted by: Alan Rimm-Kaufman | Mar 4, 2007 9:21:19 PM

i wonder if this stuff works for small and medium advertisers

Posted by: hans madisson | Oct 11, 2007 6:52:49 AM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC