Panama is LIVE! - for some

[rustybrick]

I am live with it.

[PPC]

So it is live!

Do you like the new interface? Can ads, adgroups, etc be edited and changed instantly (like Google) or is there still an editorial process that needs to take place before anything is changed?

[rustybrick]

I haven't used it much - but I think you will be pleased with it.

[AussieWebmaster]

The import campaigns and convert third party campaigns is a nice touch.

The help files are very detailled.

While not instant the approval process takes only a few minutes.

The biggest cons are a lot of the links and procedures are not intuitive. Setting date ranges requires clicking on an image which do not really suggest a calendar, finding your ads inside the interface takes getting used to - you click the word and the ads break out...

But Yahoo now has multiple ads a huge plus while temporarily still sharing bidding info.

[rickm]

does upgrading give you a competitive advantage? for example, if my competitor upgrades to Panama before I do, then are their ads more likely to appear above mine if our bids are the same?

[Discovery]

Upgrade Your Account
The new Sponsored Search enhancements are available for you to preview and use! To preview a read-only version of your upgraded account, click the Preview button to the right. When you are ready to upgrade your account and take advantage of all the new features, click Upgrade Now. If you do not click Upgrade Now by Jan 10, 2007, your account will be automatically upgraded. For best results, be sure to review the

So ready or not you will be panamized on Jan 10. I do like the preview of your conversion to the new system before it happens feature.

Discovery

[YahooSarah]

Hi Discovery,

Glad to hear you like the preview feature! I’m jumping in here to clarify that the January 10 upgrade date does not apply to our entire base of US advertisers – it’s the “upgrade by” date for those U.S. advertisers who received that particular batch of invitations. As you know, we’re inviting U.S. advertisers to upgrade to the new platform in stages. Every invitation group has its own preview period and upgrade deadline.

That said, if anyone wishes to be “panamized” as soon as possible , please submit a request to upgrade early through our reservation page: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/...search/invite/ , and we'll work to accommodate your request.

YahooSarah

[jbgilbert]

The import campaigns and convert third party campaigns is a nice touch.

ONLY for Gold and Platinum levels -- Yahoo won't let anybody else use the import function!

... easy transition...

Yuck! Every category is transitioned as a 1 campaign with 1 adgroup. Dumb, should have equated categories to adgroups the way we have always had to do.

... I hear it's more Google

Google Like? Not really, it's MUCH more MSN like!

... Will it bring a competitive advantage?

New management system... that's all. Still just displays ads through the same old distribution network, so don't expect better conversions, etc.

Sorry (new product, same horrible attitude and support) -- they still don't get it .

[psurplus]

i have been notified that i can upgrade my account since early last week. i have chosen not to upgrade since we have our Overture account managed by Efficient Frontier. With EF our account will migrate on Jan 15.

[fulton savage]

i have VERY mixed feelings about this upgrade.

1 + i love the new interface, moving about and administering is a breeze.
2 + painless upgrade. i requested an early upgrade a few weeks ago, i get an email this week and yahoo bangs it out in 3 hours. done. same day.
3 - all my ads titles were butchered. "Here" was the new title of the majority of my ads.
4 + reminder to create a fresh back up of all campaigns just before upgrade t minus
5 - logged out for inactivity while writing new ad copy, ad copy destroyed
6 - no daily spending limit values set at point of conversion. sure i immediately set them, but i still stamped out $80 for hello world clicks on panama
4 ~ download this adgroup and download this campaign links deliver me a dead zip file. ysm support team says they cannot replicate error. could be me, so this isn't so bad

[Gianluigi]

If i must compare it to the old system, Panama is a major improvement. I haven't used it much, because the migration from the old system to the Panama system did not go smooth at all. -> structure is all mixed up.

[PPC]

I just got upgraded on Tuesday and I really like the new interface. Here is my take...


Pros:
- love the interface
- ad testing is great
- display of performance metrics and easy to select date range(s)
- transition took no time
- have received good support from my rep so far
- error reports on submissions made it easy for me to see and correct any errors in my submission
- reporting looks improved
- conversion tracking worked flwlessly right away

Cons
- ads and listings were totally mangled during switch (though I was ready for this and spent probably 60 hours or so filling out a bulk upload submission beforehand)
- review time for ads, this is my main complaint: ads still need to be reviewed manually and right now ads/terms that drive about 85% of my spend are pending review and not live (Xmas and right after are the biggest days of the year for our company and we NEED to have this sorted by then)
- system glitches on submission - many of our ads were declined for too many characters in the title, short description and/or long description when in fact they were exactly the length allowed (or one character less)
- ads not displaying properly on searches at yahoo.com: rather than displaying our short description of 70 characters, yahoo was displaying the long description, which would actually be preferable. The problem is that it would cut the long description off after the first sentence (so that if an ad had a first sentence of three words, this is all that would show in our ads). I needed to go back and edit a majority of the long descriptions and now all those ads are pending review and offline.


Overall, this transtion has been good in my opinion. Though if the terms and ads pending review don't get reviewed very soon, it could turn out to be a total disaster.

[Discovery]

I think the major issue to discuss is where YSM is headed with Panama in the second release and how soon will that come.

In my view the goal of this first release was to simply eliminate the old platform and interface and create the fundamental platform (That everybody else has) from which they can move forward on.

They finally understood the DTC could not be fixed, it needed to be scrapped.

As we know they made a couple major changes to their model. An ad ranking system, the way they have us structure campaigns, and the editorial review process - all welcomed changes.

This release is at least 2 years behind the industry. What I believe will be the most critical action for YSM to take within the next 2 months is to address their ad network. As JBGilbert correctly points out, this is an admin console change (both internal and external for YSM), but has nothing to do with the network that is riddled with junk clicks and click fraud. This is what is important to advertisers - not the eye candy.

I like that I see the ability to restrict our ads to the US only. If it actually works then I know we will be eliminating 15% of the click fraud we received at YSM from China, Korea, and India.

Is that my soap box over there? Ah yes, thought it looked familiar.
So once this checkmate lawsuit has been rammed through, I hope that YSM will immediately implement a limitless domain/IP/toolbar blocking feature for ALL areas of their network. This needs to happen by the end of January or they will loose the momentum of the new release and fall back into the "promise and never deliver" chasm.

Once you have this first implementation of Panama combined with proper ADVERTISER controlled click fraud/Junk Click tools then you have an offering that can start to compete with Google and the rest. And that is a good thing, even for YSM skeptics like myself.

Discovery

[hajith]

I have switched one of my accounts to the new interface. The conversions and cost per conversion is very bad. Its almost 30% of what we were getting previously. We have seen 80% of the traffic from Bogus sites. Some times the impression in bogus sites is counted as click. We have turned of the content match completely, still seeing the traffic from the bogus sites.

Do other see same sort of issues??

[Discovery]

Here is the big question:

Are you getting unwanted traffic from foreign countries?

Discovery

[hajith]

No. The traffic is from United States only. But the traffic is not from Yahoo. It is from yahoo partner sites. But all these sites are bogus sites. I dont understand why Yahoo has that kind of partners. Most of the sites are misplelled domains like moortgage.org etc.

[fulton savage]

I replied to this thread yesterday suggesting that I found a few broken links on the new ysm system (here). Not true. The problem was computer specific after all.

[sem4u]

Originally Posted by jbgilbert

Yuck! Every category is transitioned as a 1 campaign with 1 adgroup. Dumb, should have equated categories to adgroups the way we have always had to do.

I thought that they were going to convert categories into adgroups? So this does not happen then?

[Mel66]

Originally Posted by hajith

I have switched one of my accounts to the new interface. The conversions and cost per conversion is very bad. Its almost 30% of what we were getting previously. We have seen 80% of the traffic from Bogus sites. Some times the impression in bogus sites is counted as click. We have turned of the content match completely, still seeing the traffic from the bogus sites.

Do other see same sort of issues??

So are you saying you weren't seeing this much bad traffic with the old interface, but now you are with the new? Nothing else has changed as far as you know?

I have heard that the default in Panama is to opt everyone into Content and that you have to go in and turn it off if you don't want it - even if you had it shut off in the old DTC. Could that be what happened to you?

If not I am very curious why this would have happened! Now I'm *really* glad I haven't switched over yet!

Originally Posted by sem4u

I thought that they were going to convert categories into adgroups? So this does not happen then?

I thought each category was going to be a CAMPAIGN, and they were going to match up keywords that had the same creative into ad groups. Apparently not. Another reason why we haven't switched. Ugh.

Melissa

[fulton savage]

Originally Posted by Mel66

I thought each category was going to be a CAMPAIGN, and they were going to match up keywords that had the same creative into ad groups.

Yes. This is what happens. However, the titles for these ad groups are unpredictable, the keyword grouping is way off, and most ad copy is mangled (as reported in this thread by myself and ppc).