Originally posted by: KristopherKubicki
I love this stupidity that hardware review sites are being paid. Are people just stupid or do they not get the fact that hardware sites don't get paid jack unless it's advertising.
The advertising on AnandTech is handled by a completely different company. We just get a check from them at the end of the month, and other than that the two companies rarely have much to do with each other. We piss off advertisers constantly, (how often do we slam Prescott, leak roadmaps, and *strongly* recommend against buying things in our buyers guides?) but you forget; in PR bad press is good press. The marketing company just gives the advertiser a hug and everyone moves on.
If NVIDIA, ATI, Intel and AMD started paying for reviews (imagine the thousands of publications worldwide), they wouldn't have a budget to do any other marketing.
This just doesn't make any sense. Are you saying these companies don't have enough money to pay for reviews, so they pay for advertising instead?
With some websites and magazines, it's generally understood that you won't get a review unless you advertise. Anandtech is the exact opposite; we review anything we want; completely independent of what the marketing company would like to see.
Regardless, you'll notice a lot of the advertising on AnandTech has nothing to do with computers or hardware. For example. we have advertisers like Verizon (how many Verizon phone reviews do we do?), Google (um... yeahhh), NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, etc, etc. Since the bulk of our advertising hardly crosses over with the stuff we review, it's really difficult to accuse a site like AT of accepting advertisements for review.
Anyways, that wasn't really directed at you overclockingoodness, I just felt like ranting I guess.
Also,
I would prefer that they save all these vendor card reviews for one big roundup, myself.
We could do that, but when December rolls along everyone would claim "why haven't we seen a single retail card review yet!". The philosophy makes more sense for motherboards than video cards, but I do like to see cummulative sets of two or three cards at a time as opposed to a huge roundup four months after the launch at which time everyone who wanted a card already read a review somewhere else and bought it.
Kristopher