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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soccerballtux - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
he's pro enough we're ok with it. I think. Spiritually, he owned us and is free to do with us as he likes. We will still love him.Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
No, as soon as some latched unto it they'd scream bloody murder and ever comments section would be about nothing but that... Besides, I imagine Anand took a full time job over there and running the site was already a full time job, unless he clones himself he can't possibly devote the time to both.lopri - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Though on a second thought (thanks for the reminder), I can't help but think that he made sure to put like-minded folks in places that matter. Joshua Ho and Brandon Chest come to mind..JKJK - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I really wish this was good news. But I've NEVER seen a sellout like this add something good. I give you maximum a year.All anand-like sites that I've loved SO much over the years since the 90's (heck, I even tried to start one myself) have declinen and ended up like crap. Every ****** single one.
I had a feelin this would happen when Anand quit, so I've looked for substitutes since then.
Please, please prove me wrong (I really wish I could bet money on this .... and loose).
ezridah - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Maybe now they'll have the budget to actually buy something they want to review (or we want them to review) instead of just depending on what vendors give them to review.That's the only positive outcome I can possibly see right now... Hopefully all the negatives I can see coming will not come to fruition.
CaedenV - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
To the new owners of Anandtech:I love Anandtech not only for the content, but because it is one of the few sites on the internet that has proper use of advertisements. Because of this I, and I suspect many others, who typically use ad-blocking software specifically turn it off in support of this kind of responsible use of ads.
If you flood one of the last great websites with advertisements I will visit it less often, and I will re-enable ad-blocking on the site. Please do not ruin a good thing. We are much more tech savvy when it comes to how we consume content, and if your crank up the ads, we will simply turn them off and ruin the revenue stream. Of course you could be like Tom's Hardware and dumb down your content to attract an audience who does not care... but then you would no longer be Anandtech in the first place.
garbagedisposal - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Toms and top 10 reviews are both garbage. Please don't learn from them.magreen - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Agree that Toms has nothing to teach Anand in the writing and reviewing department. I've been reading AT since 2005. I discovered Tom's around the same time. I quickly realized that Tom's was garbage and stopped reading it around 2006. Please do not learn from them.Sabresiberian - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Remember Tomshardware before Purch (for those of you like me that can), and look at it now.There are going to be changes. A lot of them won't have anything to do with keeping the content quality at the same level. That being said, bottom line, for me, while Tomshardware produces a lot more stuff I don't care about, it still has editors that do a good job, it still has the occasional well-written article I am interested in. I suspect the same will remain true of Anandtech.
And I already have NoScript set to block out the majority of those crap ad site links Tomshardware tries to connect me to.
SeannyB - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Hopefully this will allow for more content. I really miss the AnandTech Podcast, and the off-the-cuff discussions & speculation & behind-the-scenes talk that allowed, as AnandTech in print can be rather clinical. I'd like to see more curiosity-driven reviews of esoteric/niche computing gear like Jarred Walton's fabulous series on radical ergonomic keyboards (I am now a Kinesis Advantage user as a result).I often felt that AnandTech didn't have the resources to cover _everything_ they might want to, so hopefully this acquisition makes their coverage more robust rather than watered down. AnandTech has a loyal long-term readership and a unique identity among tech sites. There are more inspired ways to leverage that than just plopping ads in every nook & cranny. (I often wondered if AnandTech could offer premium content a la Giant Bomb instead of depend solely on ads.)