Yahoo! Springs the Lock on Panama a Bit Early

Yahoo! yesterday reported a 37% decline in net income for third-quarter 2006 and warned to expect more of the same in Q4. But the search company also announced that it has already begun inviting U.S. search marketers to try its Project Panama search campaign management platform, an innovation that, once completely rolled out in Q1 2007, should start attracting new advertisers and bulking up ad spending on its network.

Revenue for the quarter was $1.12 billion, compared to $932 million during the same quarter last year. That was in line with the lowered expectations Yahoo! announced at a Goldman Sachs analyst conference last month. At that time, Yahoo! attributed the falloff to weakness in the automotive and financial sectors which led to reductions in their spending on online display ads.