interactive Yahoo! Panama launches in SE Asia Almost two years after its US launch, Yahoo! Panama rolls out in Southeast Asia. Anita Davis assesses its potential Yahoo! has belatedly rolled out its Panama search ad platform to Southeast Asia, albeit to a mixed reception from digital marketers in the region. Panama, launched in the US in 2006 before spreading to Asian markets such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan, will shift the pricing of Yahoo!’s search offering in Southeast Asia from a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis – in which marketers pay according to impressions – to cost-per-click (CPC). A Yahoo! Southeast Asia spokesman said the platform is now available in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. However, Panama does little more than align Yahoo! with Google, which has offered CPC for several years. James Hawkins, group head of search of DGM in Singapore, said Yahoo! needed to launch far more innovative capabilities if it wanted to make up ground. “My overall view of Panama is that it’s not the great wonder “Google is purely a search engine; Yahoo! is both a portal and a search engine. There’s no way Google can compete with Yahoo! on the portal side of the business,” he said “If anything, Google will suffer from its sales going into Yahoo!” Leonard Tan, managing director of PurpleClick Media, added that the flexibility of Panama could tempt more small businesses to invest in digital. “Most SMEs have very lean budgets and can’t afford big ad campaigns,” he said “Panama will be able to address this for SMEs because it is very specific and measurable.” The news comes as Yahoo! in the US unveiled plans for a new display advertising system called AMP, which will allow marketers to place ads on Yahoo! or onto the sites of its network of publishing partners more efficiently. At present there is no specific timeline for the system’s delivery, let alone its extension into Asia. ■ Yahoo!... Panama transfers pricing of search ads in Southeast Asia from CPM to CPC Yahoo! thought it would be. It’s made a negligible difference and it hasn’t stopped the rot of its declining market share,” Hawkins said. “It has spent years developing Panama to compete with Google, only to see Google speed ahead.” But analysts agree Panama offers Asian marketers what they need to run more efficient campaigns. For example, the system lets marketers upload their ads to the site almost instantaneously, as opposed to the days-long wait they previously faced. They also have the option to alter ads during campaigns. Mark Newton, vicepresident of digital media at Qais Consulting in Singapore, agreed that Panama does no more than bring Yahoo! in line with Google, but points out that, given Yahoo!’s strength in display sales, it could make for a powerful combination. Review Hari Ramanathan, Young & Rubicam Singapore Just enter your email address.That’s all it takes for Spokeo to filter through everyone in your contact list automatically and provide you with their MySpace profiles, their pictures on Flickr, their blogs, their Friendster networks, their Pandora Radio playlists, their Amazon selections and other data from more than 23 sites around the internet, all presented to you neatly on one screen. Some people think this is like 1984 on a personal scale. I feel this is the start of (to use a cliché) web 3.0. It is a site for people who want interconnectivity without posting online every time they want to relieve themselves.The entire novelty of adding as a ‘friend’ some chap you’ve seen on a friend’s friend’s buddy list on Facebook will die down. A recent BBC documentary highlighted this sentiment when it profiled an Oxford student who was fined by the university because of pictures found on her Facebook profile. She was aghast they had seen these photos, though she was reportedly fine with some pervert from across the world having access to them.And then there is Facebook’s grand plan to make some money, which involves more or less everything you can find on Spokeo being provided to advertisers so they can tailor their ads. Maybe that’s why it’s called the worldwide web: eventually the spider comes and gets you. Spokeo... monitors your contacts’ online activities digitalmedia-asia.com april 2008 digital media 17 previous page next page