OUR community evangelist Alex Villafania is in Singapore now, covering the Yahoo! Southeast Asia Advertising Summit.

Yahoo! had interesting things to say about user behavior in Asia, particularly the shift from traditional media to rich media, and here’s an excerpt from Alex’s story:

Citing figures from a survey conducted last year by research firm Synovate, a Yahoo! executive said a growing number of Asians are spending more time using the Internet than any other medium. Singapore and Taiwan are currently leading the pack, followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. Television remains the main information source for Filipinos but the Internet has outranked newspapers, magazines and radio.

Though traditional advertisers dictate that marketing budgets go to traditional media, such as TV, radio and print, the gap is closing for online advertising, particularly with the rise of new content such as online video.

“Rich media will become premium content,” said Yahoo! Southeast Asia managing director Ken Mandel in his opening remarks at the Yahoo! Southeast Asia Advertising Summit here.

Here’s a video Alex took for INQUIRER.net VDO, as Mandel emphasized that “consumers want more than search.”

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

YES, this plan has been in the works for the past years, according to its Southeast Asian executives.

Now that Yahoo! has seen the growth in the number of Internet users here, and the potential for business and advertising (they say 85 percent of users here avail of a Yahoo! service), then it’s but logical for them to bet their money on the country.

So while everyone’s — well, almost everyone, including the taxi drivers — attention is focused on the Senate investigation on the controversial national broadband network project, it’s business as usual in the high-tech industry.

According to its executives in Yahoo! Southeast Asia, the Internet giant wants to be the “starting point” for local users. The Internet company is also pushing its “unified advertising” strategy in the Philippines.

So after the bid from Microsoft, Yahoo! has already realized how much it is worth — perhaps more than what the Redmond-based software company has offered so far.

The next step, of course, is to expand in emerging markets like the Philippines.

CHECK out this video INQUIRER.net executive editor Leo Magno and reporter Alex Villafania took of Yahoo! Hack Day for iVDO, our online video channel in partnership with — guess who? — Yahoo!

And read Alex’s article for more details.