MANILA, Philippines--Yahoo will set up its own Philippine-based operations due to the encouraging growth of Internet users in the country, Southeast Asian executives said.

"We're escalating the Philippine operations given the demand," said Jojo Anonuevo, the newly appointed general manager for Philippine operations of Yahoo, as he pointed out that about 85 percent of Filipino Internet users currently use Yahoo services.

Citing industry figures, Anonuevo said that the Philippines has about 22 million Internet users to date, with growth rates of about 30 percent a year.

The local office will be ready in the next quarter of this year, the executive said.

Anonuevo has left his regional job to take on the new role in the Philippines to help further build the Yahoo brand and business in the country.

Yahoo has also appointed Cris Concepcion, the new strategic consultant of Yahoo Southeast Asia, to help Anonuevo.

Anonuevo stressed that Yahoo has been slowly building its business in the country.

This year, however, Yahoo is going to actively engage the local market by pushing Yahoo as the "starting point" for local users.

Yahoo is also bent on promoting its "unified advertising" strategy and partnerships with local content providers.

Details of how Yahoo intends to execute its local strategy are, however, still scant.

But Anonuevo hinted that since last year, Yahoo's strategy for the Philippines has changed due to what the company has seen in the local market.

The Yahoo Southeast Asia executive noted that spending on online advertising is expected to increase to 5 percent from less than 1 percent of the total Philippine advertising spend this year.

And since Yahoo now owns 85 percent of the local share of Internet users in the country, the Internet giant wants to "monetize" these eyeballs, he added.

Concepcion, for his part, said he is going to be the "eyes and ears" of Yahoo in the Philippines.

Yahoo will keep on pushing its program for local Internet shops, but at the same time, target game publishers for potential partnerships, Concepcion said.

Both Anonuevo and Concepcion are also tasked with generating more content for the yahoo.com.ph website.

Declining to name their local content partners, Concepcion said that the Philippine-centric portal will have more local news, sports, and entertainment content.