Yahoo’s Panama Migration: Mixed Reviews

Jan 23, 2007 at 9:41am ET by Greg Sterling

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a surprisingly long article, in anticipation of Yahoo’s earnings call today, on experiences with Panama platform migration. The reviews and opinions presented are generally positive but the article also points out that some smaller businesses have had problems and frustrations.

Among the positive comments:

Chris Wallace, vice president of media for search-marketing firm iCrossing Inc., whose clients include Coca-Cola Co., says, “Our experience has been positive, in part because we do a significant amount of due diligence prior to migration” to the new system. Veronica Muth, a marketing coordinator for Telogis Inc., a fleet-management services and software firm in Costa Mesa, Calif., that spends about $3,000 a month on Yahoo search ads, agrees about the experience. “The migration process was easy,” says Ms. Muth, who attended a Yahoo seminar about the upgrade for advertisers last week.

And representative of the detractors:

Rob Montalbine says technical glitches prevented the Hawthorne, N.J., relocation-services company where he is Internet-marketing manager from accessing Yahoo’s search-ad system for most of three days after its upgrade. “With an aggressive search-marketing campaign and matching budget, three days is a millennium,” says Mr. Montalbine, whose company buys ads linked to 14,000 keywords through Yahoo and at times has spent more than $7,000 monthly on search ads.

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at a Local Mobile Search, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

See more articles by Greg Sterling >

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3 COMMENTS ON Yahoo’s Panama Migration: Mixed Reviews

Kyle Deevers, January 23rd, 2007 at 1:22 pm ET:

You can read that Wall street Journal article for free with a netpass thingamabob at: http://www.congoo.com/netpass/install

Somehow it can get you into Wall street Journal and other subscription sites for free.

David, January 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm ET:

I manage quite a few high profile accounts with Google.

I’ve been very happy with YSM but have lost control of my YSM Control Panel to a client who has all my details.

I’ve called the YSM search people and my case was upgraded to (in my opinion) rude supervisors who have yet to resolve their problem – it is not my problem.

Now I’m a really polite person until someone pulls the flush…..

Please YSM get it together – I am keeping a trail of times, dates and names and would be interested in hearing from any others that are getting nailed here.

I can’t manage my own account! and I am supposed to manage others through it.

YSM what are you going to do? I am documenting this and you are sat on some of my hard earned money that I can’t do anything with……

Class action?

Google keep it up guys you make it too easy and are wonderful!

David Saunders
david28078 at gmail dot com

David, January 24th, 2007 at 8:06 am ET:

I received a call from YSM last night and have been promised things will be fixed today. YahooSarah who posts here and there PM’ed me and I really do wish everyone would show a human side too.

I will let you know what happened

David

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