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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Railgun - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
There's a reason I don't go to TW anymore...Railgun - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
TH that is.AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns:
all the "Tom's" brand sites
Anandtech,
Top Ten Reviews,
LiveScience,
Space.com,
BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
Achaios - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have been reading Anandtech since the Core 2 QX9650/Intel X48 era (2007). Anandtech really set the standard at that time in the PC Enthusiast World. Who can forget the following epic articles:-http://www.anandtech.com/show/3381 This is Anandtech warning Enthusiasts to beware of too high VTT and CPU PLL voltages.
-http://www.anandtech.com/show/2427/4 This was one of the most influential articles in the word of PC Enthusiasts/Overclockers. In it, Anandtech explains in detail the TRD concept (Northbridge Latency) and how to achieve the best possible performance out of your X48 board.
Anandtech really, really was THE authority in PC overclocking.
Lately, the only article I saw that came close to the very high Anandtech quality standard was this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-...
I have noted a decline in articles focusing specifically on overclocking and PC enthusiasts. It is wrong IMHO to neglect the PC enthusiast/Overclocker segment of your fanbase. PC related articles lately seem more like a presentation of products rather than in-depth analysis. It is the "in-depth analysis" and the "uncovering of overclocking secrets" that brought substantial fame to Anandtech.
My two cents anyway. I'd say the same things to Anand himself.
AndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
First things first: Is there enough cash for an edit button please? Now, down to serious business:Both Tom's and Anandtech are my favourite two hardware news sites. I like their differences, and I read most news articles on both sites.
This sentence, "AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another," is cause for some mild concern. Please don't unify, I like your differences.
The fact that Purch now owns:
all the "Tom's" brand sites
Anandtech,
Top Ten Reviews,
LiveScience,
Space.com,
BuyerZone,
And a few others that I'm sure I'm missing gives it, in my eyes, INCREDIBLE power to sway people's opinions about things. I have re-enabled Adblock Plus on Tom's and Anandtech until my suspicions go away, which will probably be just after lunch when I'm going to go have some McDonald's. (Hey, what can I say? Food makes most things better. :-)
TheSlamma - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
You consider McDonalds to be "food" your credibility is totally goneAndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
@TheSlamma :-)Mark_gb - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Years ago, I would hit Tom's Hardware site 3 to 5 times a day, and often find new articles, news stories and other things I was interested in. I read through every single article soaking up the info being presented.Then, it because obvious that something had changed. I didn't know what. But going to Tom's more than once a day for almost anything because rather useless. There were far fewer news stories, and reviews suddenly only appeared at midnight or whenever some NDA expired. And getting more than 1 story/article/review a day released almost never happens.
About 8 weeks ago, I posted on Toms that their forcing ads onto the bottom news pages despite my running AdBlocker was something I would not put up with. I later discovered a way to turn those off. Now I have to assume this is coming to Anandtech as well.
So to now read that the same people that bought Tom's are going to be running Anandtech hurts.
I assume that this means that now I am pretty much losing most of the info I have gotten over the years from this site.just as I did on Toms site. I find this very disappointing.
I guess the old adage applies... Follow the money. Thats all it is ever about... The money.
creed3020 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Well well, the other shoe drops....Anand leaving for something as big as Apply meant that this site needed to get out from underneath him and now we have the results of that.
I will admit that I read TH but the quality is low compared to AT and the quantity certainly does not make up for it. I am strongly sitting on the fence now to remove both from my favorites and move on.
What I don't understand people saying "hope this acheives their goals". The goal of this site is to attract viewers to top editorial talent, top quality, and top articles to drive data driven decisions in terms of commerce, or on the other hand to attract viewers who have a deep interest in understanding tech and are the 'go-to techie' in their circles and are held in a position of trust. AT is in a position of trust in our circles, as the readers the sale of the site is an invitation to the abuse of that position of trust. Only time will tell if steps are taken through that door but this plan of "more ad = more revenue = bigger = better" will QUICKLY FAIL and the _readers_ will leave.
Thanks for all the hard work over the years, I truly hope you prove the nay-sayers wrong and this pillar can stand strong.
JBVertexx - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
I stopped reading TH because the ads became out of control. Go take a look at that site - it's impossible to read. I'm very disappointed that AT is now owned be TH. I view competition as a good thing, and now there is less in this space.Oh well, time to move on.