Sadly, UK Panama advertisers cannot advertise on US Panama unless you create a US-based account and vice-versa, as Webmaster World reports. Within the country is another story, as Search Engine Round table suggests:

“To target prospective customers by state, province, or territory:

1. Click the Specific Regions button. The Target By dropdown list is displayed.
2. Select State/Province/Territory. The states, provinces, and territories within your market are listed below.
3. Select the regions to target.

A Webmaster at SERoundTable reports a mail he received which says Yahoo! Has begun experimenting with Panama in UK.

Announcing the testing of Panama, Yahoo's contextual search advertising platform in UK, the letter said, "We constantly test new implementations and matching technologies. To help ensure we launch our new ranking model successfully we have started running a limited test across our UK advertiser listings in which the display order of Sponsored Search listings in some keyword markets is based on factors other than bid."

Not as easy as ABC, but a little more systematic than that is the process of converting Google AdWords Campaign into Yahoo Panama. GotAds gives a list of uncomplicated steps for those interested.

The new Google AdWords Account Snapshot Beta is so much inspired by the Yahoo! Panama’a admin that it looks like a copy. It has been reported by Dan London and Loren Baker.

Coming from Google, this is a nice compliment for Panama. As per originality, it has never been a concern for the search engines. In fact, much worse had happened when Yahoo!, MSN and Google were experimenting with sponsored ad placements.  

Yahoo! New ad serving system Panama bagged a big catch today, reports Market Watch. Yahoo! has entered into a multi-year agreement to provide all the advertising for Viacom's Web sites, including sponsored search and contextual ads.

The agreement shuts Google out of at least 33 of Viacom's most-important online entertainment sites, including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com, comedycentral.com and BET.com. Financial terms of the deal, which could be expanded to 140 more sites, were not disclosed.

Panama was launched amid huge expectation, both on the part of Yahoo! and publishers. Yahoo! was fast losing out in the search and advertisement market to Google. Publishers, who still hadn’t lost hope with Yahoo!’s failure to launch Panama still hoped for some wonder product.

Yahoo’s Panama has been quite a success in USA. So much so that it was seen as Yahoo’s dark horse which will single handedly narrow the gap with Google. Though, that is less likely to happen anticipation for the new platform across the Atlantic, in Europe has not dampened.

Jensense has reported that Panama will be launched in UK/Europe Q02, which is within three months after March, 2007. The supposed source of the information is Andrew Buckman - EU Product Director for Yahoo Search Marketing – who spoke at Seodays. Jensense also informs that YPN will follow Panama but with a time lag.  

Barry on Search Engine Roundtable has informed about a  WebmasterWorld thread which inquires the possibility of achieving a perfect 5/5 quality score in Yahoo!'s  Panama Platform.

ClickSpark on WebmasterWorld asks:
 In the new Panama platform, as you know the Quality index is a giant factor in ad performance and traffic. It took me years to get a handle on Google's and now Yahoo's seems even more crazy. I have hundreds of ad groups, and the best I can find is a 4/5 quality index. I have groups with 15% CTR that are 3/5's. Has anyone gotten a 5/5? Is this reserved for the big companies in Yahoo's good graces?

Finally, Yahoo! has a reason to celebrate. Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch has reported that initial results for Yahoo! Panama has been encouraging. The new ad platform has performed well for the big marketers and provided quality results to searchers too.

Last week, we saw results from Avenue A | Razorfish that supported this. Among that agency's clients, search impressions were up an average of 5 percent, cost per click (CPC) prices were down an average of 6 percent, with clickthrough rates up an average of 10 percent.

With the end of 2006 Yahoo! officially uncovered the commonly known Panama Update. Since that time the accounts are being upgraded from the older systems to this fresh system. Not all the accounts have been upgraded, however, it is expected the task would be full and finally accomplished by the end of march, approximately. Yahoo! Panama is definitely a welcome change.