Google Adsense – Geekzone

Google required some photos for their AdSense testimonials. AdSense is a way for publishers to monetise the content they create. One of New Zealand’s leading AdSense publishers is the popular technology forum/website Geekzone.

To go alongside the testimonial below, one of Google’s PR agencies asked me to take a photo of Mauricio, the site’s founder, showing the ideas of Geekzone in a photograph.

“We launched www.geekzone.co.nz in 2003 to be a repository of ideas. In those days it was hard to share content, and we started by posting things we had found around the Internet. We later set up a forum so other people could share news and discuss issues, and now we call the site a technology community. It serves 500,000 unique visitors a month. We signed up for AdSense in 2003 as we were keen to find an advertising solution to pay our hosting bills. Back then we had no time to sell advertising, and New Zealand was a very small market where it was difficult to attract advertisers. AdSense took care of both of those issues.

AdSense has proved to be very effective. I left my day job in 2007 because income was coming through and it made financial sense. As the site grew, we started partnering with local advertisers and running their campaigns together with AdSense through Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers. The integration between AdSense and DFP into a single tool has made our lives much easier. AdSense has been a really reliable and valuable revenue stream, and even today we couldn’t run the site without it. It gave me the safety net I needed to change my career and go into publishing full-time.”

Mauricio Freitas, Founder, publisher, blogger and administrator
Wellington, New Zealand