News
New Report Reveals Early Impact of Yahoo! Panama on Marketers
SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets jointly issue report evaluating the impact of Panama on marketers’ spend
ATLANTA, GA – March 7, 2007 – New research from SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets examines early results of the impact of Yahoo!’s new advertising platform, dubbed Panama, on marketers.
SearchIgnite, a leading search and media management technology provider managing more than $200 million annually in paid search, teamed up with RBC Capital Markets, whose research arm methodically covers Yahoo!, to track the early results of Yahoo!’s new advertising platform which launched in early February. The companies jointly published a white paper today entitled “Early Returns From Panama,” revealing some key findings:
- Yahoo!’s market share for paid search advertising dropped precipitously in 2006, but its share has stabilized since Panama’s debut.
- Big brand marketers have benefited most from the Quality Index, driven by an increase of two percentage points in click-through rate, and a 24% decrease in cost-per-click. The Quality Index measures the expected relevance of an ad based on factors such as its historical click-through rate (CTR). Before Panama, ads were just ranked based on the highest bid. Since Panama’s launch, both the bid price and the Quality Index factor into how a marketer’s ads rank.
The report, which tracked more than 7.5 billion impressions and 85 million clicks across more than 500 marketers, was compiled based on research conducted beginning in Q4 2006 and running through February 24, 2007.
“After months of delay, we were delighted to hear of no further complications with Yahoo’s Project Panama, and have noted generally positive feedback from advertisers,” said Jordan Rohan, Managing Director and Internet Analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “We've been impressed with the smooth transition to the new search platform. Yahoo's management team should be congratulated for its initial success. Now the company can work to close the monetization gap with Google, and to grow its global audience.”
“While it’s still too early to asses the long-term effects of Panama, we’re very pleased with the improvements thus far, putting Yahoo! in a much better position to recoup market share and compete effectively,” said Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite. “Brand marketers are clearly best positioned to benefit from these improvements, particularly due to the Quality Index, allowing them to leverage their brand equity as well as their offline marketing investments.”
This report will be presented quarterly, starting in April 2007, reviewing full performance for Q1 2007. Subsequent reports will start to reflect budgetary decisions that search marketers are making regarding their budget allocations across the major search engines, reflecting the longer term economic impact of the Panama release. For a free copy of this initial report, visit www.searchignite.com.
About SearchIgnite
SearchIgnite is a leading search bid management and portfolio optimization technology that uses complex algorithms to help marketers and advertising agencies achieve their ROI metrics across all the major engines. With comprehensive proprietary campaign measurement and optimization tools, SearchIgnite provides advertising agencies and sophisticated marketers with a single dashboard to manage multiple simultaneous campaigns in real time. Using a portfolio approach, SearchIgnite provides the tools to maximize campaign effectiveness across multiple search engines based on each client’s business objectives. SearchIgnite is a trusted advisor to all the major engines, and sits on Google, Yahoo! and MSN’s prominent Technology Councils. For more information on SearchIgnite, please visit www.searchignite.com.
About RBC
RBC Capital Markets is the corporate and investment banking arm of RBC and is active globally in debt origination, sales and trading, foreign exchange, infrastructure finance, structured products, metals and mining and energy. Its North American equity underwriting, sales, trading and research business dominates the Canadian market and supports a significant and growing franchise in the U.S. middle market. Bloomberg ranks the firm as one of the Top 20 investment banks globally. In terms of assets, RBC is the sixth-largest bank in North America.
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