U.S. customers may prove the point with online catalog

Ziff Desktop Information, a subsidiary of Ziff Communications Co. (the publisher of PC Week, PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, MacWeek, MacUser, etc., and the parent company of Seybold Publications), has just launched an online information service, Ziff Buyers’ Market, which will carry advertising for PCs. It is a part of ZiffNet, hosted by CompuServe. Ziff expects it to be wildly successful.

Conventional wisdom has held that advertising doesn’t work for online information services. Since the first videotex and teletext experiments in the mid-eighties, nearly all of the ad-supported ventures have fallen flat. Apparently people are just not interested in having their flow of information interrupted by ads — or, in the case of the Prodigy Information Service, they simply may not pay any attention to them.

Ads and nothing but ads. Ziff staffers are gambling that won’t be a problem for a service that is nothing but ads. Think of it as an electronic catalog, they say, one that does more than printed catalogs can. (And despite the presence of articles and news stories and letters to the editor, catalogs is what PC Week, PC Magazine, Computer Shopper and their ilk really are.)

Look at it this way: you could look for your next PC in Computer Shopper, where just about every computer maker advertises. You will be sifting through about 700 pages of ads, trying to compare features and prices. Or you could do an electronic search through the Buyer’s Market on CompuServe for the features you want and the price range you can afford. You will rapidly zero in on the few models that meet your criteria; then you will be able to request spec sheets from the vendors, or if you are the decisive type, to place the order right on the spot.

Ziff knows that the more comprehensive the listings, the more valuable the service. So it has kept the price of a basic listing — the equivalent of a classified ad — down to $50 per month.

But Ziff is a past master at extracting revenue from advertisers. Vendors will be able to buy featured positions (their name will come up at the top of a category), product storyboards (multiple screens of copy) and extended listings for premium prices. Unlike other CompuServe services, there is no connect-time cost for Buyers’ Market.

The French national dial-up information service, Minitel, languished until the users discovered that its online chat bulletin boards were a great way to arrange romantic trysts. It will be interesting to see how Buyers’ Market fares. Perhaps shopping is to the American soul what sex is to the French.

Peter Dyson