Last night I got a sneak peek of the new Yahoo! search marketing platform which is expected to be available around January 2007. They held a launch event at the Opus Hotel in Yaletown – great venue, good appies but not sure about the mini corn-dogs on a stick. At first glance, the Yahoo! interface appears to be VERY user-friendly but packed with a ton of features. The two that I really like are geotargeting and key phrase interpretation. The geotargeting allows you to very easily cater your advertising specific to cities and regions. This is great for small businesses who only serve a local area or have many locations with geographically sensitive pricing or promotions. It is also a great way to keep your advertising costs in control. The key phrase interpretation is a very cool feature and falls in line with the “long tail theory”, providing recommendations of other words and phrases in being used to find your site, other than the most popular ones you are already likely bidding on. I’ve got Yahoo! Canada’s presentation from last night – you can download it here.