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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  • Tchamber - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link


    Ryan and team:
    I've been a casual reader since the Pentium 3, and I always read your reviews before making a computer purchase. I've even started reading your mobile content before making purchases. I have great respect for you and your team, and I will continue to visit your site regularly. The ranters and ravers out there probably care too much, but then they'll probably come back time to time to see what's going on...and in time well be regular visitors again. Don't sweat them. I wish you all the best...and early Merry Christmas :-)
  • CristianM - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    I see the first change after the buyout is the removal of the dailytech feed. Not nice, not nice at all.
  • milkod2001 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    I only hope this Purch won't force you guys to put as many ads as on Toms and that your reviews will keep current high standards and won't change into prepaid/pre-scripted ads with millions links to Amazon, Newegg etc. Only time will tell if the last IT mohycans(Anandtech) just got stabbed into back or not.

    For the missing edit option: why don't you guys use fast, secure & properly working Disqus instead of this joke?
  • Devo2007 - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    I am amazed at the attacks being lodged against the writers and other staff at Anandtech; people who are human beings just like you & I. People who (generally) have put in a lot of hard work making Anandtech what it is.

    For those who really think they can do a better job, go ahead and do it! Don't just sit there and badmouth the writers here. Show a bit of respect here!

    It's fine to have an opinion and offer constructive feedback, but quite a lot of the comments here have been anything but constructive.
  • VanDiesil - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    Sad day indeed. I have been around the internet tech sites since day one for most and Anand lal Shimpi was the person that made Anandtech what it was.

    When the bigger sites started selling out (Windrivers was one of the first), that spelled the death of truly unbiased editorial. Most of the reviews started to be the same including bigging up flawed hardware to the point that it was pure fanboism (yes I know not a word!) over the actual truth. The only site that continued to truthfully review products is HardOCP with no airs or graces other than the truth.

    I wish all the best to Anand and will now remove the bookmark from my browsers.
  • digiguy - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    I think Anandtech deserves the benefit of doubt. I am not surprised to hear some people predicting the end of the world. It always happens in these situations. What matters is not them, but how things will develop over the next months and years. Anand left, which is undoubtedly a loss, but the rest of the team still makes an excellent job, so I will keep on reading them every day, and I am sure many will do too. I am not too worried about ads, if big popups start to appear I will simply remove AT from Adblock plus whitelist... But as long as people like Kristian, Ganesh and the others stay on-board I will stay with them... If they start leaving I will leave the boat too.
  • FITCamaro - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    Is that why Dailytech links are no longer on the sidebar?
  • cknobman - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    Yeah I commented on this yesterday as the Dailytech links were one of the mains reasons I visited this site besides the articles. I'll give it a bit but if they dont come back I'm out.
  • Tchamber - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    What...is it too hard to add DT to you favs? Your life sounds rough, how on earth are you going to cope?
  • zlandar - Friday, December 19, 2014 - link

    As someone who has been sh!tted on by megacorporations for being too small to matter I understand.

    The only way to fight fire is with fire. You have to get big enough to matter so the megacorpations blink when they lowball you and you tell them to f@ck off.

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