SAN DIEGO PAPER HOLDS OFF ON I-SHOPPING PROJECT

Sunday Newspaper Insert Failed To Draw Advertisers





The latest victim of the dot-com meltdown is i-shopping, a
newspaper-sponsored monthly publication that had been expected to
launch next March 4 and reap a windfall of Web ads. "We have made
the difficult decision to put the i-shopping project on
hold," said a Nov. 17 letter sent to 86 newspapers that had
joined a cooperative to distribute the 16-page startup to 8.3
million households with their Sunday editions.



The publication was designed to be filled with ads for
traditional retailers, such as Kmart and Macy's, that offer
products online. It was developed by advertising executives at
The San Diego Union-Tribune. Co-op members would have
shared in net revenue in proportion to their circulation.



John Morton, president of Silver Spring, Md.-based Morton
Research Inc., said, "What this shows is that nobody has yet
completely figured out the way to use the Web for e-tailing
- and I'm not just talking about newspaper companies. "We're
probably going to have several different initiatives in several
forms before one finally turns out to be a big winner, if one
ever does," he added. "Brick-and-mortar companies that [also do
e-tailing] may question whether they need to have something
different from the ads they already have that can signal their
Web sites."



Similarly, Interactive Week recently claimed, "America's
daily newspapers have yet to see a dime of profit from all the
money they've spent getting on the Web."



The Union-Tribune had arranged for i-shopping to be
sold and managed by Innovative Media Solutions (IMS), a division
of Downers Grove, Ill.-based Newspaper Services of America. But
ad sales were sluggish in the wake of the dot-com stock-market
crash and the dot-coms' dismal third quarter.



"The retail dot-com landscape is just so unstable right now,"
said Scott T. Whitley, advertising director at the Union-

Tribune. "We suffered from the negative halo effect of the
dot-com shakeout.



"Universally,