Improving the signal-to-noise ratio, by Tom Glocer

A huge trove of information is now free and this has disrupted the media landscape like nothing else in the industry’s history, he writes in Brunswick Review published by international corporate communications group Brunswick. 

The primary competitive advantage media companies had long held was their iron-clad grip over both the content they created and its means of distribution, Glocer says. That, coupled with the huge cost of entry into the business for would-be competitors, ensured a very powerful business model for newspaper publishers, TV networks, record labels, and movie studios.

“But information alone isn’t enough, especially given how much of it there is these days,” Glocer writes. “Equally important is ensuring that the information we provide is valuable in terms of giving our customers the ability to find the information they require in a sea of data.”

Describing the Reuters news wire as one of the oldest media outlets in the world, Glocer says: “I firmly believe that this flood of information plays to Thomson Reuters singular competitive advantage as an information provider. Our entire business model and strategy for growth rests on a basic assumption that relevant, actionable information and the tools to analyze and act upon it have value. We have found that professionals all over the world are willing to pay for information that they absolutely require to do their jobs and they want exactly that information, not more.”

He adds: “In a world awash with data, the problem that professionals face is not, therefore, an overabundance of information, it is the lack of good filters. In an increasingly noisy world, Thomson Reuters improves the signal-to-noise ratio for professionals around the globe. We enable our customers to detect the often faint signals hidden in big noisy data sets that help them fulfill their goals. That is information worth paying for.” ■