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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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"There will be more content pushed at the pretense of "more eyeballs equals more ad revenue" at the expense of quality"With the preface that there is always some kind of speed/quality tradeoff in every action we take, we have not and will not intentionally pick speed and meaningfully compromise the quality of our articles. Our commitment to quality remains today as it was last week and last year. Quality is what makes you guys (our readers) come back day after day.
antialienado - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
So, we will have two copies of the same information in Tomshardware and Anandtech.abhaxus - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
truly sad news. Anandtech and [H] are the sites that convinced me to remove adblock from my browsers. Toms is certainly bad now content wise, but my last favorite thing is easily the annoying ads. Especially the scrolling ad that slows down you scroll speed on mobile. Infuriating.I have always respected this site, having read it since 99 or 2000. I remember when they implemented Intellitext AND LET YOU TURN IT OFF. Doubt that will happen with the new owner.
Good luck guys. Please prove us all wrong.
jwaight - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I am sad to see this. I do not want to see AnandTech become a site where a 5 page write up becomes 10 pages loaded with adds and links that make power-reading a chore not a pleasure (Tom's Hardware). In the last year or so the number of updates and posts to the site dropped off noticeably. Since Anand left, I have found few articles that drew my attention enough to read.Please write more reviews like what AnandTech was based on.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I remember when Voodoo Extreme and Gamespy were bought by IGN.Anandtech and Toms Hardware being owned by the same larger company reminds me of that. One is going to be dominant and the others are going to be drained from, thrash about with irrelevance, and eventually completely subsumed.
I'll remember you like I remember Sharky Extreme, Voodoo Extreme, Gamespy Online, and others. You were great once before Mobile took over your mind so much that you even mention it as your main point of interest over your bread 'n butter material.
I guess you already know that mobile is your angle now and Toms gets PC hardware, so you're playing up to that post-haste. Probably why the "Rented by AMD Cheap" section is finally gone, too?
Time for that agreement to end if you guys are going to be "The Mobile SOC Site," right? ;) Yeah, I remember when VE was going to be the "PC section" of IGN. Or when Gamespy were going to be independent...
I hope you guys aren't really believing what you're saying here. Lying to others is one thing, but lying to oneself is dangerous indeed.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
The realities of life are that PC growth is stagnant, and very likely it will shrink in the coming years. We're well into the "fast enough" era of computing, and in another five years the trends happening now will be even more visible. Anand felt very strongly for the past couple of years that focusing purely on the PC side of things was the road to irrelevance. GPU articles still get great traffic, and so do CPU reviews, but most of our tablet reviews get far more traffic than any of our laptop reviews.We're not abandoning PCs by any means, but the problem is we haven't really had any uptake in advertising for the mobile section -- so despite much greater traffic in our mobile section, it's not really paying the bills (and then some) like it could. I don't know how much companies pay for advertising on AnandTech, but let's just say as an example that our PC content makes on average a penny per page view because there are advertisers that want ads in the "PC" section (but it would really be GPUs, CPUs, SSDs, Laptops, etc.). If the mobile section generates just as much traffic but only earns on average 0.1 cents per view, then there's likely a lot of room to improve things.
Bigger sites right now are getting the bigger advertisers, especially in mobile. They're getting sampled more hardware. That brings more traffic, which enables them to hire more people, and the cycle repeats. Mobile supports PC just like PC supports mobile, and they grow together. Hopefully we can get on that end of the cycle. That's the plan at any rate.
SunLord - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Thanks for confirming I won't need to visit Anandtech anymore in the coming when I have interest in PC reviews as you're abandoning your core readers and passing them off to the shit pile that's Tom's so I'll only if I want to know about the next apple phone or SoC once every 2 yearsKristian Vättö - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Jarred didn't say that we are abandoning PC reviews and the core of our readers -- in fact he said the exact opposite. The truth is that mobile presents a bigger growth opportunity for us, so like any business it's logical that we invest in it. What this means is that you will likely see more and more mobile content from us in the future, but it for sure doesn't mean that there will be a decline in quantity or quality of our PC reviews. Basically, it's just more content overall -- it isn't away from anything that we currently do.(For the record, this is just my view and interpretation of this. Ultimately any and all content strategy decisions are up to Ryan, but I for sure am sticking with the PC side and SSDs)
Ilias78 - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
But here is the thing. You HAVE abandoned PCs pretty much for years now. Slowly, you focused more on mobile devices and tablets a WHOLE LOT more that you should of had. Anandtech was a site that was all about PC hardware and software - and you guys were giving us less and LESS of such content as time passed on - you people just didnt care enough anymore and you went to where the money is - plain and simple. Its ALWAYS about the money. That why Anand left - Apple was probably giving him more money than what he was making from the site. Thats probably why Justic Sklavos left (one of the best PC case reviewers ever). And thats why the remaining Anandtech staff have become a bunch of sellouts. Money talks.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Actually, since I am on the inside on a lot of this, I can tell you that Dustin (not Justic) left for Corsair because they offered a salaried position with benefits and more pay. Vivek went to Razer for similar reasons, and Brian is at Apple again for similar reasons.If you didn't know, the paycheck of a typical hardware reviewer/journalist is not exactly monstrous -- I'm well short of six figures for example, and other than site owners I haven't ever heard of a tech journalist making that much. But a good engineer at any good tech company could definitely make in the six figure range. There are tons of other benefits (working from home, playing with the latest gadgets, doing something you enjoy, not having a rigid 8-5 work schedule), but it takes a lot of effort to live on a journalist's pay.
As far as PC vs. Mobile, again, we need both. AT started with motherboard reviews, because it was a hot topic in the 90s. These days motherboards are all reaching a level where for most users it's not a huge part of the overall experience -- most boards perform similarly, so it's just a question of what features you need. If AT hadn't evolved from motherboards, what would have happened? If we hadn't added smartphone, Apple, tablet, SoC, etc. coverage, would we still be as relevant?
But we still have Ian doing mobo reviews, so our roots haven't disappeared. We still have Ryan doing GPUs, I do laptop stuff mostly (and guides, which is basically where I started), Kristian is on SSDs -- all PC stuff. Josh, Andrei, and Brett are more mobile focused, and we'll probably add people to that segment over the coming months, but that takes time.