Yay! No more lost circulars

By: Jennifer Saba Readers of Sunday papers who love their circulars but tend to misplace them can take heart. In late August, CrossMedia Services ? recently purchased by Gannett, Knight Ridder, and Tribune ? launched a Web site that now features all of a newspaper's advertising. At ShopLocal.com, a user can fully search for stuff by products, category, retailer or even by zip code. The site has agreements with Target, Home Depot, CVS, and Circuit City, among others.

ShopLocal.com will be sold as an added benefit to retailers running in the three companies' papers. Smaller retailers tend not to have the resources to build a searchable database or even an e-commerce site like larger, national stores. ShopLocal can level the playing field by featuring all advertisers together. The site charges retailers between 25 and 40 cents for every click-through, thus delivering qualified users. If a retailer chooses, the site can direct a person to the retailer's own Web site where a product can be purchased.

But ShopLocal is not a buying destination in itself. Rather, it's an extension of a paper circular or ad that lets readers research the best deals. The concept has been out there for some time, but it had not been fully executed the way ShopLocal has. The Dallas Morning News has a similar function on its site, but it only reproduces ads in a PDF type format ? and they aren't searchable.

Grand plans are in store for ShopLocal. "We're trying to build another CareerBuilder," says Tribune Interactive and Classified President Tim Landon, who says they executed this project in three months. He wouldn't mind reaping the $200 million in revenue that CareerBuilder has grossed so far this year, either.