Future plc to Acquire Consumer Division of AnandTech Publisher Purch
by Ryan Smith on July 18, 2018 8:00 AM ESTIn a change of pace from the usual, we have some news about ourselves this morning.
Future plc, a competing UK publisher, has announced that they will be buying the bulk of Purch, AnandTech’s publisher. The deal will see Future acquire Purch’s publisher services division (ad sales) along with the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) group. The vast majority of Purch’s publications – and essentially anything that you might read – are organized under the B2C banner, including AnandTech, Tom’s Hardware, and Space.
The deal is valued at $132.5 million USD, and is expected to close on August 31st. As Purch is a privately held company, the deal has already been approved by Purch. Meanwhile Future will be seeking shareholder approval to issue new shares to pay for the acquisition.
Once it closes, the acquisition will see all of Purch’s B2C brands joining Future’s existing brands across the globe. In the technology space this includes TechRadar, GamesRadar, and PC Gamer. Ultimately Future is looking to strengthen their own technology publishing services, and this deal is expected to make them the top tech publisher in terms of comScore rankings.
Speaking off the cuff here, at this point I have not been informed of any acquisition-changes planned for AnandTech. We remain a strong site in traffic and the depth of our editorial content, and I do not see that changing. In the meantime as the deal moves towards closing, I'll be sharing any new and relevant details with you, our loyal readers.
Purch Announces Sale of Consumer Brand Portfolio and Technology Platform
Business-to-Business Division to Pursue SMB Market Opportunity with Business.com.
NEW YORK, July 18, 2018 — Purch, a digital publisher and marketplace platform, announced today the agreement to sell its U.S.-based Business-to-Consumer (B2C) business unit and all associated brands and services to Future US, Inc., a subsidiary of the publicly traded UK-based media company, Future Publishing Ltd. The sale includes the Purch brand along with the full portfolio of consumer brands, including Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware, TopTenReviews, ShopSavvy, Live Science, and Space.com. The sale also includes Purch’s innovative yield optimization platform, RAMP, and its associated licensing business. The existing Business-to-Business (B2B) unit will move forward as Business.com, renamed after the B2B business’ marquee brand.
“As CEO, it’s been a thrilling and rewarding experience to help guide the development of Purch as a leading marketplace-centered publisher. Our focus on content and commerce and the development of proprietary monetization technology enabled us to build a diversified and profitable business, while avoiding the challenges of ad-dependent publishing models. We are joining forces with a like-minded publisher with strong complementary assets. Future’s acquisition of the B2C business unit is an opportunity to grow Purch more rapidly and to realize its full potential,” said Greg Mason, Purch CEO.
“The acquisition of Purch’s consumer division, with its leading titles, such as Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide and Space.com, gives us market-leading authority in the US, helping us deliver on our mission to be a global platform for specialist publishing. I’ve been impressed by the strength of Purch’s technology platforms and the expertise of its people. Together, we will build a combined organization that has scale and growth opportunities ahead. The two businesses share similar cultures – we both share our audiences’ passion, we’re data-driven, ambitious and both have an innovation-led mindset. I look forward to welcoming our new Purch teams on board at Future,” added Future CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne.
The sale is expected to close in August.
The remaining B2B business unit, now named Business.com, will continue to focus on developing its unique marketplace-centered business model serving the small- to medium-business (SMB) community. Already a large and profitable business, Business.com and its portfolio of related brands now have the opportunity to further expand the content and services they offer to small business owners, arguably the largest and most important segment of the U.S. economy.
The B2B business has grown considerably from when Purch acquired BuyerZone in 2014, followed by the Business.com brand in 2016. Its service-oriented digital platform provides SMBs with the advice and tools they need to grow their businesses to the next level, and the company has plans to significantly expand the services it brings to its millions of members.
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Media Contact:
For more information, please contact Régine Labossière at Goodman Media International, rlabossiere@goodmanmedia.com, 212-576-2700.
About Future:
Future plc is an international media group and leading digital publisher, listed on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR). The Group operates two separately managed brand-led divisions: Media and Magazine. The Group has a reach of 100m+ globally, including 62m online users and 63m social media reach.
The Magazine division is brand-led. It has over 100 market-leading publications, with 10 key titles.
The Media division focuses on being at the forefront of digital innovation, in particular, the high growth technology and games markets, with three complementary revenue streams: eCommerce, events and digital advertising. It has a number of leading brands including TechRadar, PC Gamer, What Hi-Fi?, Louder, The Photography Show, Generate, The Homebuilding and Renovating Show and the Music Week Awards.
About Purch
Purch is a digital publishing and marketplace platform uniquely positioned at the intersection of content, commerce and customer. By combining in-depth product reviews, comparisons and services with industry-leading publisher technology, Purch creates a seamless connection between intent-based buyers and sellers. The company generates more than $1 billion annually in facilitated commerce through its tech, shopping, lifestyle and SMB brands, including Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware, Top Ten Reviews, ShopSavvy and Business.com. With more than 1,200 product categories, Purch is the #1 source for buying advice for more than 100 million people each month. To learn more about Purch and its owned-and-operated sites, please visit www.purch.com.
Source: Future plc
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
We've been making bad "future" jokes all morning. I expect it will be going on for a while...StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
To be honest. I miss Dailytech. Was a good time waster when nothing new was at Anandtech.Sadly they went tits up. :'(
Mr Perfect - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
Oh man, the trolling on DailyTech was off the radar! What's worse is the trolls started to spill over into Anandtech after a while. I'm not sure they've all entirely left, either.drexnx - Thursday, July 19, 2018 - link
I think they're all over at WCCF now, the comments section there is like Detroit in RoboCopFunBunny2 - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
another step on the race to the bottom. always happens that way.PeachNCream - Thursday, July 19, 2018 - link
It's way too early to say if an ownership change will have a detrimental impact. We know a change in ownership is happening and there may or may not be differences that we'll see from a reader perspective, but our feelings negative or positive will have little impact on the acquisition. Our best bet at this point is to simply keep reading what Anandtech publishes, cheer them on when we can and occasionally complain in a comment if we'd like to see something different in the hopes that our grumbling is worthy of attention and can be addressed within the scope of AT's available resources.RaduR - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
The only problem I am seeing is that , after Anand left the site si losing so much value. The information is less and less technical and in no way at the level Anand used to write 10 years ago .Probably it will continue down the road to become an average Ad site .
So bad that initial Anand flavor is lost for good.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
Rose tinted. I disagree. Plenty of HQ content still coming out all the time.https://www.anandtech.com/show/10000/who-controls-...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the-amd-zen-a...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-ge...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-sky...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12195/hisilicon-kir...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12361/samsung-exyno...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake...
imaheadcase - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
But its the same stuff vs years ago a wide variety of stuff. You focus more on business related stuff, you don't focus on reviews of products a average person will get like it used to be. You will jump from a motherboard review to some review of a $20,000+ server and talk about it like everyone knows what its going on inside it.Reviews are nice that we get, but they are not as in depth as they used to because you guys focus is all over the place.
How many times you and others post "Its been a busy week, we hope to have it reviewed by.." That is a sign you are way over reaching with content.
You guys even failed to even consider other ad revenue streams, its the reason why many people block ads to begin with. The second the new company puts in a message to please turn off adblocker when visiting the site is the second i stop coming here.
The reason so many website have failed is not because of traffic from ads, is that they put them in to begin with. I don't even visit the mobile site, its cancer.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
But its the same stuff vs years ago a wide variety of stuff. You focus more on business related stuff, you don't focus on reviews of products a average person will get like it used to be. You will jump from a motherboard review to some review of a $20,000+ server and talk about it like everyone knows what its going on inside it.> A lot of our readers are professionals. We do a range of content. We also have different editors that focus on different things: Johan does the server stuff, we have Joe on motherboards, Ganesh on SFF, Billy on storage, etc.
Reviews are nice that we get, but they are not as in depth as they used to because you guys focus is all over the place.
> I disagree. We still have dedicated editors for dedicated segments. We have more full time editors than we used to pre-Purch. We also have more freelancers.
How many times you and others post "Its been a busy week, we hope to have it reviewed by.." That is a sign you are way over reaching with content.
> Do you want more content, or deeper content but less of it? We get requests for both, but with a fixed set of people, it's one or the other. Yes there is also admin, moreso than being an independent site. We have to live with that when working 40-60+ hours a week. I've got five systems running tests concurrently. That's how things are.
You guys even failed to even consider other ad revenue streams, its the reason why many people block ads to begin with. The second the new company puts in a message to please turn off adblocker when visiting the site is the second i stop coming here.
The reason so many website have failed is not because of traffic from ads, is that they put them in to begin with. I don't even visit the mobile site, its cancer.
>Ads are done by the publisher. We can have a say, but it's not under our control. Different side of the company.