As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every week we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. We posting our next publisher story a couple of days early to celebrate Valentine’s Day! Read on to meet Gerald and Janice, the husband and wife team behind Istorya.net. As always, feel free to share your own success story with us.
Gerald Yuvallos and his wife Janice run Istorya.net, the biggest online community in the Southern Philippines. Istorya.net was started in 2002 by the couple who are based in Cebu City, as a virtual place for local users to talk. In Cebuano, their local language, ‘istorya’ means ‘talk’ or ‘story’.
Today, Istorya.net receives over 700,000 unique visitors every month and acts as a virtual ‘home away from home’ for Filipinos all over the world. According to Gerald and Janice, "AdSense has been our main revenue stream. It’s probably the only reason we’ve stayed online.”
“The revenue that we get from AdSense has allowed us to upgrade our servers and software,” the couple affirms. “This in turn, makes our community better. Without AdSense, we wouldn’t have been able to support growth of our site.”
DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business has also been an essential tool in supporting the site’s success. “All I can say is that the integration of AdSense with DFP is heaven-sent!” says Gerald. “This integration is our favourite feature as it is now much easier for us to manage our inventory.”
Looking ahead, Gerald and Janice plan to continue improving the user experience on their site, and investigate the possibility of launching a mobile-friendly version of Istorya.net.
