Panama assesment

You may remember my earlier post about Yahoo's release of their new search marketing platform, Panama, well, it's been two weeks and it's time to assess if it has been beneficial to Yahoo and its advertisers.

According to a report issued on Monday by comScore Networks, click-through rates (CTR) for Yahoo search ads increased by 5 and 9 percent percent respectively during the first two weeks the company began delivering ads using the overly delayed Panama technology. More specifically, comScore says that CTR increased measurably in the weeks ending February 11 and February 18 versus the previous week, which ended on February 4. An increase in the CTR will result in more money for Yahoo. In addition to more money for Yahoo, the sponsored results are also more relevant to searchers, which will likely result in more searches done on Yahoo.

The entire objective behind the new technology was to close the gap between Google and everybody else in the search landscape. While two weeks is hardly enough time to claim any victories, the initial results are promising. However, the results may have been inflated because of gift hunters for Valentine's Day.

ComScore will be following the performance of the new ranking model and they will deliver analysis at the end of the first quarter.