Online publishing company TechMedia Network, which runs brands like LAPTOP, Space.com and LiveScience, announced that it has acquired Bestofmedia Group, which runs brands like Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide and Tom’s IT Pro.

This is the first acquisition TechMedia Network has made since securing $33 million in growth funding in late 2011.

A spokesperson for TechMedia Network tells WebProNews, “By adding BOM’s properties to TMN’s portfolio, TMN will reach over 72M tech and science readers worldwide (BOM’s global reach was a huge asset for TMN), putting them at #5 on comScore’s global tech media ranking and #3 domestically. From a scale POV, for TMN clients, the added reach was key. CEO of TMN Greg Mason would also add that this puts TMN just 4-5M monthly users away from #1.”

“He wants to go head-to-head with CNET (his former employer), and be the leader via scale,” the spokesperson adds. “Beyond that, though—everyone has scale, so you need to create more unique value for advertisers—Greg also saw an opportunity to marry content, community and commerce through the BOM buy. BOM offers an innovative community platform to source user-generated content, while TMN offers its own e-commerce platform—they’ll merge the two and integrate both across their combined brand roster”

“Our goal is to become the most trusted tech and science publisher in the world by creating high-quality, personalized media experiences for our readers and customized ad opportunities for our clients, at scale,” said Mason in the announcement. “By integrating our commerce engine with Bestofmedia’s communities across our combined portfolio of sites, not only will we be able to deliver personalized purchase recommendations to consumers, but also highly specialized environments for advertisers to engage these consumers with timely and relevant content. It’s a unique value proposition that we have yet to see in tech and science publishing.”

“When looking to increase our U.S. footprint, TechMedia Network immediately jumped to the forefront of potential partners with its growing audience of nearly 50 million[4] monthly unique visitors and impressive content syndication network,” said Antoine Boulin, President of Bestofmedia Group. “Its portfolio of award-winning tech and science publications is a natural fit for our sites and the opportunity to marry their e-commerce engine with our world-class communities and our combined content expertise is an exciting prospect for the future of highly-specialized, vertical media.”

Bestofmedia Group’s properties see over 30 million uniques per month, we’re told. Terms were not disclosed.