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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Impulses - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Because Kristian would probably never finish a comment otherwise...I kid! Is the site manager getting a raise and does it come with a side if edit button? :p
michal1980 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Kristian you know that's not true. Business and editorial are not separate. Google adsense called complaining about youtube downloaders, and you purged the forums.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Forums have absolutely nothing to do with editorial. Some of us editors are registered and post there, but we have no mod/admin rights or any say regarding what happens in the forums, including the recent Google issue (for the record, I didn't even hear/know about it until yesterday when reading through the acquisition thread).FlyTexas - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Kristian,I get what you're saying, but to make such comments tells me that you've never lived through a corporate buy out.
I have... you're in for some enlightenment, if you're paying attention. It won't all come at once, it won't be an overnight shock, the idea is to ease everyone into the "new normal".
You can't toss a frog into boiling water, it jumps out. But you slowly turn up the heat and you're eating Frog Legs for dinner.
There is too much money to be saved by moving the deck chairs around, the hopeful comments by people in this form are rainbows and unicorns, the comments leaning towards "R.I.P." are likely from those who have lived it.
At the end of the day, always remember... "It isn't personal Sonny, it's just business".
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You are right that I haven't lived through an acquisition. Do I have concerns? Sure. Am I scared about the future? Hell yes. But at the same time I trust what Ryan has told us i.e. that we will remain editorially independent and there won't be any significant changes for us editors. I also trust that what Purch is feeding Ryan is true because I trust that Anand wouldn't do a deal that would hurt his work that he spent nearly 18 years building. Heck, the site still carries his name.If I had no belief for the future I might as well find the exit right now. I'm willing to give Purch the benefit of the doubt that they will handle this well and I think more of the commenters here should do so as well. Tom's isn't a good example because they had been acquired several times before, so the original team that built Tom's and its reputation has been long gone. We, on the other hand, are the same people who worked here under Anand and more importantly were trained and taught by Anand.
Nothing has changed for now -- I'm still working on the same review as I was earlier this week. If things change over time, then it's time for us both, readers and editors, to re-evaluate the situation. But let's not make any rushed conclusions yet.
alacard - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
The almighty dollar wins again. Greed might be one of the most powerful forces in the universe.Anandtech, by doing this you've taken everything that made your site worth reading and have chucked it carelessly into the fire. I will take no joy in watching your decline into the clickbait abyss, but by selling yourself to the highest bidder i can't say it wasn't earned.
And the gradual decline of the fourth estate continues.
KPOM - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I'm sure Anand joining Apple was a big part of this. Now that he has no financial interest in AnandTech it frees him from conflicts of interest, and may actually improve independence at AT since it can't be claimed that Ryan et al were secretly acting to support Anand's new employer.Fx1 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have never seen a company get sold which ended up being a better company or a better place to work. Anand has cashed out. This was basically for his benefit and no one elses. Give it 18 months and this site will be finished.MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Just to be devil's advocate here, you most likely are going to hear about company buy outs that were bad for a reason--it gets more attention than the other way around. I worked at a place that bought out another company, and that old company seemed great, but it was managed unsustainably and was headed for bankruptcy. In that case, "the good ol' days" weren't going to last either way.So what of Anandtech? It's a wait and see game. Personally, I think most tech sites have fallen into a rut lately. Many aspects have flatlined because of the mobile push. Who buys desktop CPUs anymore? GPU tech is at a crawl. SOC advancement is slowing down. Much of this is due to process node barriers that are getting quite expensive to overcome. New smartphones are largely just spec bumps with needless increases in pixel density. With all of the above, tech sites start becoming product review sites (of which there are too many options to thoroughly review).
lopri - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
It is perplexing that people take this news as a "sellout" of AnandTech. Isn't it the opposite? The previous owner was an Apple employee. Surely there would be an appearance of impropriety had he remained as an owner of the site while working for a company whose products he reviews. And it would be ridiculous for any of you to demand Anand to quit working at Apple and to keep running this site.