"Google AdSense funded our start-up".

WW: What is the idea behind the website www.pocketPC.ch?
Julian Zrotz: It's all about smart phones. We publish daily news, reviews of all smart phones and a lot of videos of all devices, where we compare the smart phones with each other and give a more detailed insight than just in the text. We now also offer a device overview. Here you can find all the news about each device, also in the form of videos. There are also previews of upcoming models and technical specifications.

What was the motivation behind the site?
It all started with a school project. Ten years ago, the website was developed as part of a computer science course. We now have 100,000 visitors a day.

Target audience?
All smart phone owners who want to learn about their devices. People who want to go a little deeper and learn about new apps. One can find optimization opportunities with us. The site is also called by many who want to get information before making a purchase.

Who provides you with the information?
Most of it comes from the manufacturers themselves, plus we do our own research on the Internet. We visit trade fairs and also maintain personal contacts with developers.

How many people work for PocketPC.ch?
We can count on 50 freelance journalists. Scouts, specialists who moderate in our forum. One specialist is responsible only for the realization of our videos.

How do you promote your site to the target audience?
Especially via Google. Most of them find us via a search query.

In return, you have also activated Google AdSense. What does that bring?
We launched AdSense back in 2006. It was a first opportunity for us to earn some money with the site. At that time we were still very small. A big marketer would not have accepted us. In the beginning, we only wanted to be able to pay for the hosting. Today we need the advertising money to be able to afford bigger servers, to finance new developments and also to reward our people a bit.

Is Google AdSense your main source of income?
It has remained an important pillar for our financing. But in the meantime, of course, we also have larger revenues from the manufacturers of the smart phones, who place ads directly with us. But AdSense still generates more than 20 percent of our revenue.

Have you had good experiences with this tool?
Google AdSense is very convenient for us and was very easy to install. For our users, AdSense is practical because visitors to our site automatically receive further and relevant information via AdSense about editorial content on the page and about their search queries. For example, if someone is interested in "outdoor" and reads an article about it, they immediately see an ad for Mammut or for hiking boots that is in context with the website content. This gives us relatively high click numbers and thus good revenues.

You have now attended a workshop at the AdSense event at Google Zurich. What's the point?
On the one hand, it's networking. But we are also very interested in the one-to-one sessions with the Google technicians, where we discuss together on our website what could be optimized in the AdSense appearance. A few months ago we already attended such a workshop and got a lot of tips there. We were able to increase our revenues significantly with this.

What are possible optimizations?
One improvement was that we only had text ads in the beginning. As a result of the workshop, we have also been displaying banner ads since then. Google's system - an algorithm process - automatically calculates which form of advertising brings in more revenue for our cash register. By placing banners - so-called "display advertising" - we have been able to improve our performance by a double-digit percentage. Another issue is: we have many different designs on the site, our test reports are designed differently than the forum. In this case, Google AdSense itself calculates which advertising - text or banner - in which place brings in the most for us. In the forum, perhaps 95 percent text is placed. In the reviews 95 percent display advertising.

How is the quality of the advertising? This must slowly improve in the creative sense, so that the engagement is triggered in the users.
We notice that the quality is on the rise. The trend is clearly towards more display ads and moving images with creative ideas that entice users to click.

How does the Google search box benefit you on your site?
We have also set this up as part of a workshop for optimization. We can make good revenue with this, because there is a lot of search on our site and will also be shared by Google in the following revenue of their advertising on the Google site.

Interview: Andreas Panzeri

In a nutshell
Last week, around 50 publishing partners of Google in Switzerland - website operators ranging from weather sites to well-known news portals and special interest sites - took part in a workshop day at the Google Zurich Office. Information was provided about the possibilities of Google AdSense. In the Google display network, publishers can have advertisements placed on their websites without any effort on their part and thus earn money "automatically". How Google AdSense works is explained in detail in Google's online dossiers (google.ch/adsense).

AdSense provides contextual ads outside of Google pages on third-party sites that are automatically generated by Google. AdSense is the most widely used advertising network on the Internet, reaching 80 percent of Internet users in 20 languages and 100 countries. There are already over 2 million AdSense publishers worldwide. In 2010, Google distributed over $6 billion of AdSense revenue (clicks on ads on third-party websites) to publishers. That means 68 percent of total AdSense revenue was paid out to publishers. And Google sees much more potential for this type of advertising. Especially in Switzerland, where only 8 percent of advertising money flows online. At the info day, Anthony Nakache from Google Dublin also orated about the future. According to him, in five years we will have 25 percent less display advertising on our screens - but more creative and targeted advertising with far higher click rates. The display advertising business could grow from $24 billion today to $200 billion in the next five years.