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Unlike some analysts, I'm not a self-styled management consultant. I don't know beans about who should be given ownership over the P&L in a vertical, and so forth. I don't work at Yahoo. I don't claim to know how everything works.

I do understand the economic engine, however, especially on the search marketing side and platform advertising side.

You can print reams of speculation about layoffs, acquisitions, restructuring, and focus. But when it comes to advertising, you have to make it easy for people to buy.

Yahoo is almost there. Panama turned that part of the company around and is something to build on. Yahoo has a sales and service arm that is second only to Google's, and given the inflexibility of Google's bidding system, Yahoo seems like almost a sympathetic sales ear in spite of their low volume.

But the rollout of the Panama feature set is still too slow. There's the economic engine I know and understand. Take what is working, and continue with its basic execution.

A very important example is an agency console to make it easy for agencies and large companies to manage many accounts, from a single dashboard, like Google has. A second example would be continued strides on things like geotargeting. I guarantee that if you do stuff like that -- make it easier to buy and manage your ads -- the people on the ground who have to implement this stuff will start actually doing more buying, rather than paying lip service to, Yahoo's available inventory. Panama rolled out successfully, but it isn't done yet. Keep going, Yahoo!

Labels: panama, yahoo

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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Monday, February 05, 2007

Last week I attended the Yahoo Search Marketing launch event in downtown Toronto (held at Kai Lounge). It's intended to confirm to Canadian advertisers that yes, now you can use the full suite of search marketing tools to target just Canadian searchers; you can geotarget; and you can do all of this using the new Panama platform. This is now live with a full complement of support reps available to provide support and assistance. My company hasn't worked with a huge number of Canada-only campaigns in the past, but coincidentally demand for it is now picking up and questions about Yahoo are increasingly common now that companies are aware of it as a second option after AdWords. An example of a field where you pretty much won't be marketing "across the board" to the U.S. and Canada would be a highly regulated area like drug trials or pharmaceuticals. As another example, a major Canada-only ecommerce site I'm pitching right now will benefit immediately from the Yahoo rollout. Money will no longer be left on the table due to platform limitations. What were companies doing in the past? Well, nothing. You couldn't buy PPC just for Canada through Yahoo.

For those who are confused by this latest launch event - because it's the second time Yahoo has held a launch event for YSM in Toronto in the past few months - I think this latest was more of a "we're flipping the switch" reminder to a selection of businesses who are particularly plugged into the scene. The previous event was broader-based and intended to gain media attention and to introduce the local advertising community to a range of Yahoo execs.

Of course for oldtimers in the industry there was little new here, but the agency community and larger advertisers should take note that Yahoo consistently refers to the extensible nature of the Panama platform. Eventually (similar to Google's trajectory), you'll be able to bid on a range of media through the auction. That consolidation is healthy but it's going to be awhile before it reaches critical mass.

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but at a dinner following the event I was told that the Yahoo Canada team has grown to well over 100, currently all crammed into the Front Street office (though they're still on track to move to a more spacious location sometime this year). The team specifically devoted to search marketing is smaller, of course - Yahoo's a diversified company so that explains the "well over 100" number.

I haven't seen much coverage of this event, other than Sulemann Ahmed's brief overview. What Sulemann didn't cover was the door prizes. In keeping with the company's fun image they had a few giveaways for those who handed in business cards. After the first ho-hum drawing, all eyes were on the next prize: the video iPod. I apologized to the friend standing next to me, warning her that "I always win the door prizes at these things." The next thing you know, her name was being called as the owner of a new iPod! So much for me being evil. :)

The final door prize, dinner and Raptors tickets, was going to be a great way for me to treat some of my buddies, so I was really looking forward to winning that one. Unfortunately, Martin Byrne (Director of YSM Canada), the MC, called me over to do the drawing, so I was ruled out! A guy from Lavalife won it. I apologize for having trouble reading his name (small white print on a bright red business card). Or maybe this was because I still had my eyes shut from the random drawing process.

It is just good to see that due to an influx of full time Yahoo people in Toronto, there are more search-savvy people to discuss customer targeting with and to generally advance the cause. Some staff have been lured back from sojourns in the UK and continental Europe - call it Canada's brain gain. Yahoo plans a full slate of events to evangelize search to marketers in Canada, beginning with some introductory level academy type courses (by a third party company) at a very reasonable cost.

Labels: canada, panama, yahoo, yahoo search marketing, ysm