WebProNews

As Yahoo's new Panama search marketing system took over the contextual ad duties for Yahoo properties, clients of the company witnessed plenty of changes through 2007.

Yahoo's lamentable search advertising capabilities drew commentary from throughout the industry leading into 2007. It had even been suggested at times that the company should either let an outsider (ie, Google) handle contextual search ads, or sell off the search monetization side outright.

But Yahoo has stuck to its in-house development of Panama, and spent plenty of time in 2007 releasing updates and tweaking its features. The Yahoo Search Marketing blog called it a "bumper crop" of updates and enhancements.

Those updates included tools like the Campaign Tune-Up booster, custom reports, low-quality ad advisories, and assistance in writing high-quality ads.

Low ad quality had vexed both advertisers and more importantly, potential customers who were put off from clicking through ads that were not relevant to their queries. Yahoo opened a Quality Center and brought in Reggie Davis as VP to head up the Network Quality operation.

One useful little post may have been missed due to its cheeky Acro-Gnome premise. That post detailed several of the more common abbreviations found in SEM, um, search engine marketing. It's a useful post for the new marketer.