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SES Conference, San Jose, CA — Yahoo unveiled today for the first time a public demonstration of their new ad platform technology, codenamed Panama.
The demonstration revealed several new features that Yahoo will offer, some of which drew scattered applause from the audience:
- Assists: The new ad platform will show marketers what keywords led up to the keyword that triggered a purchase. For example, say someone searches for “digital cameras” and then searches for “Sony Cybershot” before they purchase a Sony Cybershot from a retailer. The keywords “Sony Cybershot” will still get 100% credit for the purchase, but the marketer will see that the user searched for “digital cameras” prior to searching with the trigger keyword.
- Geocoding campaigns via Maps: When a marketer sets up a new campaign, he/she can select to limit the campaign by designated market area (DMA). The marketer can select those DMAs by clicking on a map.
- Keyword crawler: When setting up a campaign and choosing keywords, the marketer can opt to have the platform crawl its product page and suggest a series of keywords to use.
- slider bar for setting your bid: When selecting your bid for a keyword, the new platform shows a power law graph that shows how bid price relates to performance. As you slide the bid price up or down, the platform shows the expected number of clicks each bid price should receive. A pie chart also shows that share of available clicks that are available.
- Marketers can set their budget at the account and campaign level.
- Alerts. Marketers can choose when to be notified of certain campaign events.
- Scheduling for promotions: You can now schedule when specific campaigns should begin.
Executives said that the new ad platform contains three components. The technology platform and the application will be released in Q4. Yahoo plans to release its new ranking scheme in Q1. The ranking scheme is changing from a pure bid system for keywords to a system that uses both bids and quality scores.
The Yahoo team also stressed that marketers’ ads would remain the same when they upgrade to the new platform. Features will all be available on the first day of migration. Regardless of when you migrate, the new ranking methodology will begin in Q1.
The Yahoo team said the new platform will not offer further dayparting capabilities, but added that they’re looking into ways to incorporate that feature in future releases.
Demostration participants were offered to be part of the first wave of migration.