Over the past several years AnandTech has grown to be much more than just a PC hardware review site. In fact, we consider ourselves to be just as much about the new mobile world as we do about the old PC world. We leveraged our understanding of component and system architecture in bringing a deeper, more analytical look to mobile silicon and devices. As we continued to invest in our mobile coverage and expertise, we found that readers, mobile component and device makers responded quite well to our approach.
AnandTech’s focus grew, but we quickly ran into a bottleneck when it came time to monetize that mobile content. Our mobile content did a great job of helping to grow the site (as well as bring new eyeballs to our traditional PC coverage as well). While we had no issues competing with larger corporate owned sites on the content front, when it came to advertising we were at a disadvantage. Our advantage in quality allowed us to make progress, but ultimately it became a numbers game. The larger corporate owned sites could show up with a network of traffic, substantially larger than what AnandTech could deliver, and land more lucrative advertising deals than we were able to. They could then in turn fund a larger editorial operation and the cycle continues.
AnandTech has been profitable since its inception; it’s been on a great growth curve these past couple of years and we’ve always been able to do more with less, but lately there’s been an increased investment in high quality content. It wasn’t that long ago where the only type of content seeing real investment was shallow, poorly researched and ultimately very cable-TV-news-like. More recently however we’ve seen a shift. Higher quality content is being valued and some big names (both on the publishing and VC fronts) have been investing in them. Honestly we haven’t seen a world like this in probably over a decade.
Before his departure, Anand spent almost a year meeting with all of the big names in the publishing space, both traditional and new media players. The goal was to find AnandTech a home with a partner that had a sustainable business model (similar to AnandTech’s), but could add the investment and existing reach to allow the site to better realize its potential. That search led to a number of interesting potential partners; it was a refreshing experience to say the least knowing that there are groups in the world who really value good content. Ultimately that search brought AnandTech to Purch.
Purch met the requirements: they have a sustainable business model, are profitable and have the sort of reach AnandTech needs to really hit the next level. More fundamentally however, Purch’s values are in line with AnandTech’s. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that Purch acquired one of AnandTech’s biggest competitors in the late 1990s: Tom’s Hardware. Purch had already demonstrated a value for the sort of deep, long form content AnandTech was known for. In meeting with the Purch business and editorial teams, there was a clear interest in further developing AnandTech’s strengths as well as feeding back AnandTech’s learnings into the rest of the Purch family.
AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another. To further invest in the areas that make us different, and together with the rest of the Purch family help to bring a higher standard of quality to the web.
The AnandTech team is staying in place and will continue to focus on existing coverage areas. We’re not changing our editorial policies or analytical approach and have no intentions of doing so. The one thing that will change is our ability to continue to grow the site. This if anything starts from the top; with a publisher to more directly handle the business of AnandTech, this frees me up to spend more time on content creation and helping the rest of our editors put together better articles. And in a hands-on business like journalism that benefit cannot be overstated.
AnandTech was an incredibly powerful force as an independent publisher, but it now joins a family whose combined traffic is eight times larger than what AnandTech was on its own. Our goal is to continue to invest in what we feel is the right approach to building high quality content; now we have an even greater ability to do just that.
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Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
(Sorry, accidental "Submit Comment" click -- I guess it's getting way past my bed time)...With two (or more) people covering SSDs we could significantly improve our output in that field. More reviews also mean that we have more products to compare to, which ultimately means that we will be able to make better recommendations. Having two editors would also allow one to focus on client and the other on enterprise, which would be beneficial from both content and vendor relations standpoints.
As for quality, with more editors we could have more people working on one review. Take iPhone and iPad reviews for instance -- there are numerous subjects to explore, which take a lot of time if it's all done by one person. With more editors and resources we'll be able publish reviews sooner after the release and explore areas that otherwise we might not be able to do due to time restrains.
While I believe our content is already high quality like you said, there is always room for improvement and the acquisition (at least in theory) allows us to deliver even better content to you guys :)
soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
that's true. If this is just about resources this could really turn into a good thing. The reivews have always been the best here, there just weren't enough of them.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
If moar content is all we get and it remains at the level of quality we're used, this will be a huge success, lens hope so as more more more is the only thing I've ever wished out of AT.FunBunny2 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I'm not sure there's much sense to that. What I glean from the reviews: you wait for the vendors to freebie the parts rather than spending a couple of hundred (or three or four) bucks. The big deal enterprise vendors won't do that, since their parts go for the kilo bucks, and their potential clients won't use AnandTech reviews in decision making. So, you'll buy a Violin array for test, now that Purch owns you? Was there such a transition at Tom's? I think not.Prosumer is as far as it makes sense for the site. SMB at the outside. Even there, most ISP/VAR vendors bundle hardware of their choosing.
alacard - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You hit the nail on the head FunBunny2. Kristian, please contact Purch and have them provide invoices detailing the extra funds they've invested into Toms in order to:a) Increase the number of editors
b) Increase the quantity and quality of content created
c) Purchase gadgets for themselves to review that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise
d) Or otherwise improve their infrastructure
All this talk of more money equaling more higher quality content with a longer reach and a wider focus seems to contradict my subjective viewpoint that Tomshardware has only gotten worse in all of those metrics since their acquisition. I hope the evidence will show otherwise.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition.We already have close relations with pretty much all of the big enterprise SSD guys (Intel, Samsung, SanDisk/Fusion-io...) and get samples from them, even though the parts cost thousands of dollars. Storage arrays are a very interesting, yet complicated topic, but ultimately most storage arrays consist of SSDs made by the aforementioned companies.
Luscious - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
"Sampling isn't only about money, but also about getting access to parts under NDA. Take the 850 EVO for instance -- it's not launching for retail until sometime after Christmas. If we waited for retail availability, our review would easily be over a month late compared to our competition."I call BS on that. The LG 34UM95 monitor became available retail in the U.S. on May 1st. I know because I purchased mine on that very day and had it running on my desk that night. On June 2 the full review was up on my website. AnandTech's review and Tom's review only appeared WEEKS AFTER that.
Maybe the SSD segment works different, but you are mistaken thinking that buying a retail sample equals a delay. I can point to many examples where having a retail sample to review would have put me in the very front of the line, ahead of all the "big name" media outlets, and I'm just a one-man operation.
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Luscious,It certainly depends on the product and company. Some of the SSD companies I deal with don't do NDA samples (even though I've tried to convince them) and you are correct that sometimes it would be faster to buy a retail unit.
However, generally speaking, I see nothing wrong with being sampled by the manufacturer. We could argue about the possibility of rigged samples, but the truth is that eventually companies get caught and then sh*t will hit the fan big time, so any rational company should understand that it's not worth the risk.
Kingston's V300 is a prime example as Kingston went and changed to slower NAND without a notice. We called them out and I know for a fact that their sales plummeted after that (I got access to major retailer's sales data here in the Nordic region). That also explains why Kingston is no longer offering us review samples... But I couldn't care less about that -- I value the truth and integrity higher than a relationship with a company that isn't honest with its customers.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
And just to add (since there's still no edit button...), nothing should change for us editors. The business side of the site will go through a full revamp, but the business and editorial sides have always been completely separated. As long as that promise is kept and we can continue our work like yesterday, you should see absolutely no change either, at least for the worse.However, if things do change for the worse, then I'll (and likely others too) be on my way out as well, so Purch should have every motive to keep us happy.
sonicmerlin - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Why isn't there an edit button again?