Reuters.com's Pitch to Consumers

By: Carl Sullivan Branching out from its corporate and media client base, Reuters is now targeting consumers directly through Reuters.com. A recent relaunch of the site emphasizes the news service's reach (with 2,400 journalists and photographers in 197 bureaus around the globe) and deep financial content.

To attract consumers and individual investors, the site offers free personal investing tools, free e-mail newsletters, free video footage of news events, and enhanced photo slideshows. In a populist vein, Reuters.com recently introduced "Oddly Enough" news, a selection of the quirky and strange stories that seem to do so well on the Internet.

Azhar Rafee, senior vice president at Reuters PLC and global head of Reuters.com, recently spoke with E&P Online about this initiative.

1. The Reuters brand is well known among journalists, but what is the brand recognition among the public? How will you improve that as you focus on direct-to-consumer Web efforts?

Rafee: The Reuters brand is indeed well recognized by the media as well as by our financial and corporate clients. But consumers too have been avidly accessing and using Reuters content through various publications, broadcast sources and Web sites for years without perhaps fully realizing that Reuters is one of the leading sources of global news and financial information. And our latest research indicates there is considerable un-aided awareness of Reuters by the general public around the world.

Reuters.com, as a direct-to-consumer medium, has already allowed us to improve the visibility of our brand by letting us showcase our history of breaking news and unbiased original reporting. We are one of the top 10 Web sites for financial news and information. By offering unprecedented direct access to complete and comprehensive professional-grade financial information and news, we are creating new relationships with individual investors and business professionals on a daily basis. We will continue to make improvements to the site and introduce product enhancements backed by online and offline marketing initiatives.

2. There are many well-known business and investing Web sites available to consumers already? How will you differentiate yourself from them and break into this crowded field?

AR: In many ways these existing sites have paved the way for consumers to rely on the Web for business, investing and world news content.

But there are very few global sources, if any, which offer completely unbiased information, fast and accurately. Reuters is one of the leading authorities in collecting, reporting and delivering unbiased information from around the world. With trust in media a key issue today, we feel that Reuters.com can help successfully fill the void. People trust the Reuters brand to provide accurate information -- and the Reuters.com site reflects that trust through presentation of that unbiased content under our own brand umbrella. This is the purest form of Reuters information you could get anywhere. In addition, Reuters.com brings a proven track record of serving a professional quality audience 24-hours a day, across every continent, fulfilling the needs of one of the most challenging audiences. Reuters.com is not just a Web site, it is a reflection of our trustworthy brand which we have built over the last 153 years.

3. What's the business model for this initiative? And is this initiative aimed primarily at the U.S. market?

AR:As a content-originator and publisher, we truly understand the value of content and the user dynamics, and therefore we have created flexible online access models that work for our users, advertisers and content partners.

Most of our revenues today come from advertising; we will continue to have a hybrid revenue model encompassing both advertising and paid access. Our research indicates that consumers today need flexibility in terms of both product and pricing. We have experience in offering advertising-based access, and through our Multex acquisition, we have now gained access to one of the pioneers in the Web-based paid-content space. In addition, we are working with a variety of new and existing business partners, and clients -- seeking out opportunities that result in creative revenue streams. [Rafee previously was an executive at Multex, a provider of information to the financial services industries.]

This year our primary focus is on the U.S., U.K. and Japanese markets. An enhanced version of Reuters.com (in the U.S.) was launched in February. We are looking to have global consistency through a common site template and a similar business model. In June, our existing Japan site will be replaced with the global template used by the new U.S. site, and then in the third quarter, we will deliver a revised U.K. site. In 2005, we intend to re-launch some of our existing country sites in Europe, Asia and Latin America to bring global consistency, new content, and local language enhancements. Even today these sites can be accessed through a global site editions option on Reuters.com.

4. How important is multimedia in your efforts? What developments do you foresee for news Web sites as broadband becomes more prevalent?

AR: We've made a considerable investment in our multimedia offering. We are a big supporter of broadband -- it's simply good for our users. And users across all the various geographic markets have given thumbs up to broadband, which is reflected in increasing adoption rates. We recognized this trend early in our life stage. In 2003, we introduced Reuters Television, which is a competitively unique online video service -- free of charge to consumers. This video service offers both edited and raw footage of news events as well as financial reports from Reuters' global network of journalists around the clock from every corner of the world.

As broadband becomes more prevalent in the consumer marketplace, news organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to present unfolding news events online as an integrated textual and multimedia experience, rather than thinking in terms of one dimensional reporting. The consumer benefits in the end.

5. What are the biggest challenges facing online journalists today in general? Business journalists specifically?

AR: The biggest challenge for online journalists is maintaining standards of accuracy and quality while meeting the very high expectations of the online audience. Especially when a major story breaks, readers expect the speed of a "this just in" radio bulletin, combined with the thoroughness and writing quality of tomorrow morning's newspaper. This is one reason why the venerable wire services, with their tradition of constant leads and updates, adapted more quickly than newspapers to the demands of online news. All of this is especially true in the highly competitive area of online business news, as journalists struggle to quickly add value to stories whose basic facts and figures are instantly available to readers and investors from a variety of sources.