Richard Firminger, regional sales director for Yahoo! in northern Europe, is a very busy man.
He is currently overseeing the migration of 1,000 advertisers' accounts onto the new Panama platform, running from meeting to meeting, managing an in-house migration team and placing full-time account managers in key agencies to ensure the smooth running of the migration.
But then, challenging search behemoth Google's iron grip on the ever more lucrative market is a big job - and that's exactly what Yahoo! has set out to do.
Can it succeed where Microsoft, with last year's launch of adCenter, has yet to make a real impact?
The rebirth of Yahoo!'s search platform is long overdue. Finally, after 400 full-time engineers working for two and a half years, Panama is here.
Yet the "launch" is by no means complete. "This is the biggest project we have ever done," says Firminger. "
We have started the full migration of accounts after moving some test accounts over.
"The whole process will take between eight and 10 weeks from start to finish. We have to avoid risks by not migrating too many of the major accounts at once."
It is not just Yahoo! that is busting a gut to ensure that things run smoothly.
Project team
Stephanie Carr, chief executive of The Search Works, a company that has 50 clients with search accounts on Yahoo!, has committed major resources to Panama.
"We set up a whole team led by a project owner and created a dedicated in-house editorial team," she says.
"We have also been building tools internally and changing others in order to become compliant with Panama."
For Carr, however, the investment is worthwhile.
"It's absolutely worth doing," she says. "As well as benefiting Yahoo!, the new system gives clients the ability to improve their results at lower costs."
She adds: "Panama rewards knowledge and skill and the search specialists will benefit from that. It will be great to see them get more market share."
That remains to be seen, but Carr is not alone in her optimism about Panama's prospects.
Jon Myers, director of search at search marketing agency Latitude, says that, despite Yahoo! being slow to catch up with Google, he remains optimistic that Panama will make a real difference.
"It's a great step for Yahoo! to take, but it's an overdue one," says Myers.
"Google has offered a lot of these tools for a while now. As for us, we've had a team of guys working on integrating Cobra, our in-house system, with Panama for the last 12 months. We're not precious on where we place our money."
He adds: "Of course we will put money Yahoo!'s way if it offers return on investment and, at first, people will try it, test it and put money into it.
"Hopefully this will mean Yahoo! grabbing some market share from Google. I would like to think that Panama has the strength to do that."
Edward Foster, head of search EMEA at media agency Universal McCann, last week started migrating clients' accounts to Panama.
"Nothing really jumps out as being better than Google at the moment, but there'll be more phases launched that could make the technology superior," he says. "It should benefit Yahoo! because better results will be served to users, increasing the number of clicks and encouraging repeat use.
"The organisation, planning and migration have been well executed, but given that they have had more than three years to prepare, it should have been."
Welcome competition
Foster maintains: "From the improved results, more consumers should use Yahoo!, which means that agencies will need to direct more budget at it."
For Latitude's Myers, any competition is welcome.
"As well as Yahoo! launching Panama, Microsoft is in it for the long haul. The conversion rates are fantastic and there's work underway to gain and retain a large customer base."
He also says that he hopes Ask.com will launch a dedicated UK platform within the next 12 to 18 months and become divorced from its reliance on Google's search platform.
But while search executives hope for competition, and Panama has offered the biggest glimmer of hope yet, it is clear to The Search Works' Carr that the market leader holds all the cards.
"It's impossible to say what impact Yahoo!'s developments will have on the market," she says.
"Simply because you never know what products Google will come up with."
HOW PANAMA OPERATES
- Panama is Yahoo!'s new paid search platform, the system that determines which ads people see on results pages after searching on Yahoo!
- Previously, ads appearing on results pages were a direct result of how much the client had bid on the keyword entered into the search engine. Yahoo! has changed how advertisers (usually through their agencies) compete for ad placements, by introducing a dual formula that takes into account the amount of money bid plus a quality index
- The quality index (Google's version is called quality score) aims to ensure that ads served to Yahoo! search engine users are relevant to them. The quality index takes into account several factors, including the relevancy of the copy produced by the advertisers and the quality of landing experience, as well as how the advertiser has structured its campaign. This, together with bidding on keywords, determines which ads appear on results pages.
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