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.

Press Release
Comments Locked

345 Comments

View All Comments

  • kizh - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    you guys don't see it.

    He couldn't afford to compete with bandwidth. Instead of arguing if the site went downhill before now or it will after. Thing about this, its about net neutrality. And tech sites aren't the only things being consolidated its EVERYTHING from fast food to slow ass internet dualoplies at 10x the cost outside the United States. I've been around when toms was the place to go, I went here when it was bought out and turned to crap. Next I guess I go to HardOCP until they get bought out. Hopefully I'll die before I run out of sites :p
  • Wwhat - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    Oh well, it was fun while it lasted and now we can see another entity sink into the world of corporate crap.
  • dsumanik - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link

    Lol we all know how "good" toms hardware become after its takeover... Get your ad blocker ready... And u guys are kidding yourselves this will not have en effect on the journalism. You have a boss now that will tell what to write when it means more clicks/ profits or payoffs from a vendor. Bye bye AT
  • DFA-Havoc - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link

    This makes me sick to my stomach.

    I believe the staff when they say they have no intentions of changing how they do things, and that they will walk if asked to compromise their integrity. However, like others who have posted, I have zero faith in AT's new corporate overlords supporting the autonomy of the staff indefinitely.

    As AT's own staff have stated many times, competition is good for consumers. AT and Toms being under the same roof forebodes only ill. There's no way that Purch is going to keep paying two different teams to cover the same material forever, and I fear that AT will get pushed into focusing solely on mobile while Toms gets the entire PC hardware pie.

    I also worry about AT becoming a cesspit of hostile advertisement like Toms. Using their site without some sort of adblock makes me want to rage-vomit uncontrollably and never return. You say that Purch should be given the benefit of the doubt, that much of the damage done to Toms was before they took the wheel, but consider this: They could have swept the site clean of the insidious/invasive advertisement fungus Day 1 of ownership, and instead it has remained in place for over a year.

    The situation at Toms has not improved in the last year. Why should we believe that they will have any positive impact on AT instead of simply milking it for all the value it has studiously built over these many years, until both the readers and the writers walk away in disgust?

    The AT staff may have good intentions, but they are no longer at the wheel. Purch may be allowing them to drive for now, but how long will that last?

    I'm going to keep coming back, and I hope that I'm proven wrong... but I doubt it. :/
  • angryemo - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link

    Can i get back the news column / area that existed on the right side of the pane on the home page? It has been replaced by an ugly face book related area :(
  • marvdmartian - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    @angryemo, suggest you simply change your bookmark to read "dailytech.com". I've already added that to mine, and if AT doesn't hold onto its old ways, it will be leaving the list.
  • kizh - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link

    to hear the truth:

    http://jakemkh.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/a-repeatin...
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, December 29, 2014 - link

    "Keep comments here, not on Anand’s site please, you know they won’t last."

    To be exceedingly clear here, I have deleted a single comment from this thread. It was a piece of spam. No comments are being removed on the basis of content. That's not something we do.
  • Matt Campbell - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link

    Best of luck guys, hope the transition goes smoothly and opens up new opportunities.
  • ex_User - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link

    Yeah, baby, take the money and RUN!

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now