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.

Positive feedback has also been provided by earch and media management firm SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets' research arm. The new Quality Index that Yahoo! launched with the platform has been appreciated too. It has enabled marketers to increase their rank with lower CPCs and achieve higher clickthrough rates too. “This has been especially true for large consumer marketers with recognizable brands, Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, told SEW.”

Among SearchIgnite's Fortune 500 brands, clickthrough rates rose significantly, from 2.3 percent pre-Panama to 4.4 percent afterward, while CPCs have dropped 24 percent overall, from $0.75 to $0.57. The effect can be seen on brand terms, where previous competition with affiliates and aggregators may have driven up costs. On those terms, CPCs have fallen 24 percent, from $0.21 to $0.16. On non-brand terms, CPCs fell 20 percent, from $1.37 to $1.10.

It seems to be good news all around for Yahoo! Read the full post here.