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Monday, July 14, 2008
Source: MELVIN G. CALIMAG
Four months after announcing that it has appointed a local leadership team to look after its business in the Philippines, Internet firm Yahoo has formally opened a full-fledged local subsidiary to further strengthen the brand - at least in the country ‘ amidst the global onslaught of rival Google.
The establishment of the local office is perhaps the first among pure Internet companies since the dotcom boom in the late ‘90s and the subsequent bust in the early part of the current decade.
Aside from growing its Philippine operation, the local unit is also tasked to provide services to Yahoo’s regional office in Singapore, the company said in a statement.
The Yahoo Philippines office, which is located in Fort Bonifacio Global City in Taguig, is led by veteran IT executive Jojo Anonuevo, who was appointed to his new role as general manager in February 2008. He is supported by Cris Concepcion, a physician and US’trained executive, who is serving as strategic consultant.
Concepcion, in an interview, said the establishment of the Philippine office would give Yahoo more access to local resources and easier time to forge alliances with local clients and partners.
"We’ve gathered a lot of momentum since announcing our plan last February to establish a local presence," said Concepcion, adding that the company is now on the hunt for workers for sales, product, and marketing roles.
The executive said they are also looking for communications specialists, as well as editorial staffers who can work on the local content that the company will be aggregating as a result of its recent partnerships with media firms GMANews.TV, Manila Bulletin, and Philippine Star.
However, Concepcion said that unlike the Yahoo’s US site, the Philippine portal would not be creating local content - at least not yet. "We’re not doing that now, but there’s always the possibility of that happening in the future if the business environment would call for it."
For now, he said the new subsidiary would concentrate its efforts in collating news stories from its content partners and firming up collaboration with game publishers like eGames and Level-Up.
Aside from the local news companies, Yahoo has hooked up with the country’s top three mobile carriers as part of its strategy to be a "partner of choice" among local firms.
At the recent CommunicAsia 2008 tech expo in Singapore, the company announced partnerships with Sun Cellular and Smart Communications, adding to the previously announced link with Globe Telecom a year back.
Under the agreement, Yahoo’s mobile tool, oneSearch, will become the preferred search service on the mobile sites of local carriers. This development, according to the company, will allow Yahoo to reach most of the country’s mobile subscribers and dominate the mobile search market.
Concepcion confirmed the announcement made recently by Yahoo Asia Pacific big boss David Ko that the company is currently testing an SMS or text messaging-based search tool in India. This service, he said, may also be soon deployed in the Philippines as a way of tapping the "middle part of the consumer pyramid" or those that have entry-level phones which are not capable of running oneSearch via 3G or the Internet.
At the same time, the official said the local office will intensify the promotion of a new advertising product called Yahoo! Sponsored Search for Filipino businesses and advertisers.
The advertising tool, also referred to as Panama, delivers targeted customer leads to businesses by displaying relevant ads as paid search results across the Web. It is based on a "pay-per-click" model and advertisers can get qualified leads for as little as $ 0.01. Advertisers can launch a search advertising campaign through an online sign-up (OLS) process.
According to Concepcion, Yahoo’s "integrated advertising solution strategy" for search, mobile, and display advertising will allow advertisers to just deal with a single entity and make it easier for them to grow their businesses.
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