Yahoo opens revamped ad system to new US customers

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo's new Panama advertising platform intended to boost the Internet search giant's sagging profits was available to new US customers on Tuesday.   

Project Panama went live in October for the Sunnyvale, California, company's existing customers and was to be phased in worldwide by early next year.   

Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel touted the new platform for matching advertising to search queries as "a significant turning point" that would "unlock the potential" of its huge base of users.   

"We've received an overwhelmingly positive response to our new search marketing platform to date," said Yahoo vice president of advertising products Steve Mitgang.   

"So we are thrilled to open it up to all businesses that want to take advantage of our more intuitive and powerful system." Yahoo said that its new search marketing platform, which was given the code name Panama during development, enabled advertisers to easily create, manage and monitor the effectiveness of campaigns.