MANILA, Philippines — Notwithstanding recent controversy regarding the exit of Carol Bartz as its CEO and re-organization of leadership, no one can deny that Yahoo! that dynamic purple word, that yodel that jumps out to you from the screen—has become part of the majority’s mainstream lifestyle, recognizable anywhere and immediately attributed to chat, e-mail, web surfing, and search, among others.

Today, the name seldom represents a shout of exhilaration and triumph, but countless information bits that pass through our mind—daily, for most.

From its start in 1994, when, according to their official page, two electrical engineering grad students at Stanford University blew off their doctoral theses in pursuit of cataloguing their favorite web sites, Yahoo! has evolved from being a technological company to a premier digital media company. Through awareness, the ability to adapt and embrace technological developments, and integrate these with what they already had, Yahoo! has remained relevant—a challenge in today’s frenetic times.

Two basic yet major efforts, separate yet complementary, have contributed to its development into a premier digital media company. The first addresses the end users; the second, their marketing, media and advertising communities.

Personalization

Personalization of each account has become their edge. Each day, as an Internet user signs in and checks mail, he lands on a page that provides news, developments, information and trends that are relevant to him alone. Try signing in while your friend signs into his own Yahoo page and it immediately becomes clear that each user has his own unique and personalized home page. It has taken Yahoo! two years to develop and perfect this service for their users, up to 13 million variations over the course of the day, globally.

Alan Soon, Managing Editor of Yahoo! Southeast Asia, shares, “The foundation of our product strategy is to create deeply personal digital experiences. Indeed, as both publishers and users experience difficulties in cutting through the sheer noise on the Internet, the challenge is to connect users with content that is personal, relevant and meaningful to them.

“The solution lies in personalization,” reveals Soon. “We use advanced technology that learns what our users are interested in to serve up 45,000 variations of our homepage every five minutes. We create deeply personal digital experiences for every one of our 680 million users who come to Yahoo! Everyday—who trust Yahoo! everyday. These experiences are simple to use and fully tailored to each individual—no matter where they are on the Web or in the world,” says Yoon.

He adds: “To ensure that each homepage is personal to its user, Yahoo! launched a personalization algorithm called CORE (Content Optimization and Relevance Engine), which serves homepages that will be most interesting to that particular visitor.”

The complex combination of photos, headlines, text and links at a personal level, in real time, helps people to quickly and easily access what matters most to them. The more a person logs onto its site, the more nuanced the homepage will become to serve personalized content on the Front Page.

No Robots Behind the Content

Yahoo! is not entirely about algorithms, though. They rely on the Front Page editors to understand what various audiences might be interested in. “At Yahoo!,” Soon explains, “our focus is on creating a content that builds communities and in turn, these communities drive social conversations.

Our experience proves that digital media means more than articles and words on a page. Everyone wants to know what is going on in the world in real time, but we also want everything that is personally and locally important to ‘me’. At the same time, we also want to know what those around us are saying. The conversations generated on Yahoo! represent the first drafts of history, and are one of the most valuable assets of online media.”

Each day, their groups of editors worldwide filter what is relevant among their sources, in what is a form of distilled intelligence that applies editorial expertise and chronological organization to help users make sense of what could be information overload. The sources mentioned earlier would be some 430 content providers, globally.

In the Philippines, they have local partners such as Manila Bulletin, The Philippine Star, GMA News Online, ABS-CBN News, Sun.Star, LoQal.ph, and Vera Files. They also have a number of bloggers commissioned to provide content for their Fit-to-Post blog network, including Lori Baltazar, famous food blogger delivering commissioned content for Timpla (a food section on Lifestyle); Sid Ventura, another seasoned sports blogger; Jiggy Cruz, a comic book lover and blogger who also happens to be the nephew of our current President Noynoy Aquino; and Patricia Bermudez-Hizon, another famous sports blogger and TV sports anchor. Many other celebrity bloggers are being signed up as more properties are launched later in the year.

The Yahoo! unique content strategy brings together a blend of original, licensed, aggregated, plus crowd-sourced, social, and advertiser content.

Learning and Building Even More from their Community

The second effort seems intertwined with the first, and runs with it almost like a cycle. As much as the group provides content and community for their users, they also learn and build further from them. For this, Yahoo! developed Net Index, their annual study which helps them address the current knowledge gap in the industry, supplying marketers and media professionals with a comprehensive understanding of the Internet medium, necessary to unlock its full potential.

“Yahoo! invests in researching its markets to both cater to its advertisers who seek to use our digital network, as well as enable us to determine the right strategy for each of our markets,” Arlene Amarante, country ambassador, says.

Yahoo!’s vision is to deliver personal, relevant and meaningful content experiences. “It is therefore important that we have local knowledge and insight,” explains Amarante. “Yahoo! Net Index delivers targeted consumer insights to assist us in developing tailor-made digital marketing programs for our consumer base. These insights are invaluable and help us build innovative consumer experiences, which drive measurable results and fulfill our marketing objectives.

“Today,” she adds, “we are seeing a generation of young Filipinos growing up as digital natives. It is therefore crucial to understand their online media and content consumption habits to be able to make decisions on how we can reach these audiences and grow our business.”

Amarante continues: “Our recent success with OMG! speaks volumes about the application of Net Index research towards developing Yahoo!’s strategic business plans. Through the findings, we were able to understand in detail what content the target audience was consuming, which sites were most visited and by what demographic, who the primary and secondary audience was, and the key positioning which we could adopt to launch Yahoo OMG.”

Yahoo! OMG was launched in March 2011 and has become the number one news site for all entertainment related news, according to Comscore July 2011. “It just goes to prove that our research and business strategies are aligned to ensure that Yahoo! maintains the lead position here in Southeast Asia,” Amarante puts in.

Yahoo! has been instrumental in making the Internet and online advertising what it is today, and the company is in a unique position to help fuel its future growth. Yahoo! is committed to being a more attentive and active partner to advertisers and agencies.

Despite the global economic crisis of the past years, Southeast Asia continues to experience phenomenal growth in the online space. The Net Index study goes beyond Internet media habits to address existing knowledge gaps in the market. Its findings extend to mobile phone usage, lifestyles and social habits, psychographics, and brand preferences. Yahoo! believes in the power of deep, fact-based insights that drive bigger ideas and better results for its clients. The Net Index initiative is a perfect example of this belief. It is a groundbreaking study that stems from Yahoo!’s guiding principles of Science, Art, Scale.

The Philippines,according to Yahoo!

Locally, Yahoo! reaches 91 percent of the population, and is the number one provider for Mail, Messenger, News and now OMG!

“As you will notice from our 2011 Net Index results,” Amarante explains, “Filipinos love international music, movies, celebrity news and entertainment and go online to search for such content and then share it with their friends and family. Social media is also very popular. At Yahoo!, we have embraced it on our key flagship products of Mail and Messenger, which are now seamlessly integrated with the social media platforms. Our aim is to nurture this and develop campaigns that are personal, meaningful and relevant.”

She says that as an emerging market, the Philippines plays a crucial role in the development of Yahoo!’s Southeast Asia business operations. It has an Internet-savvy, educated, English-speaking youth population, which is very important to Yahoo!’s development in the country.

“Yahoo! is investing significantly in the Philippines,” Amarante reveals. “Our local teams are focusing on educating the new-to-net users, at the same time also learning about their unique Internet habits and preferences. This is where our annual Net Index study adds value. It helps inform our strategies and investment decisions, which are all about being current and relevant. In this way, we maintain our reigning position.”

Next time you sign in to Yahoo! to check what’s happening in your inbox and in the world out there, you may think you’re just one of the millions who represent “clicks”, but perhaps, feel a little better because whatever you see and click is especially made out to you, and for you.