At this year’s Las Vegas PubCon, Yahoo! fully unveiled its new “Panama” search marketing platform. Mona Elesseily of Page Zero Media stopped by to chat with Mike McDonald of WebProNews about Panama and what changes and additions advertisers can expect from the new software. Mona is one of the preeminent authorities on the Yahoo! search marketing platform, and is the author of the Unauthorized Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook.

With Panama, users can expect a sleeker, more intuitive interface with which to interact. The software has been completely revamped not only in terms of functionality, but also enriched to decrease the learning curve so that advertisers can quickly familiarize themselves with the major features and subtle nuances of the platform. Panama also integrates previously separate features, such as geo-targeting, into a single application to provide a more centralized element of control for the user.

Another feature that Mona touts about the new platform is the increased metrical/analytical functionality built into the Search Optimizer tool. A major component of Search Optimizer is a feature called The Assist, which acts as a keyword pathing mechanism to provide advertisers with a broader picture of user behavior and the keyword chain that leads to conversions, rather that merely looking at the last keyword before the conversion.

To learn more about Mona Elesseily and the Unauthorized Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook, visit Page Zero Media‘s site devoted to the search marketing platform. Mona will also be presenting at next week’s Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago.