Inspirational to Transactional or the other way round?

I have always been fascinated by the number of “self improvement” magazines available in magazine stands in the US: health, beauty, home improvement, hobbies…: magazines Martha Stewart would have approved of. Meredith Corporations owns a portfolio of lifestyle magazines: largely targeted at women. Its media properties include the magazine Better Homes and Gardens alongwith its sister website http://www.bhg.com/. On its website, which was launched last month, (and I understand that all features will be up only by this year-end) consumers will have access to have to online home remodeling resources including using drag and drop design, painting, coloring and decorating tools. While trying these options themselves, consumers will be able to research associated products online. Meredith is developing a relationship with Home Depot and Lowe’s to create this catalog of products consumers can interact with. Dan Hickey, editor-in-chief of bhg.com claims he is delivering a holy grail to both consumers and manufacturers by combining editorial content with comparison shopping. Consumers will have the ability to move from the “inspirational to transactional” supported by information along the way.

I really wish Mr. Hickey the very best of luck. Nearly nine years before, in the early days of the Internet, I had co-founded an online content development company Aesthetic Technologies. One of the business ideas we interpreted vigorously was the very idea that Mr. Hickey is trying to implement. We tried to tie up with media properties sponsor content on content on specific areas (Femina for Pregnancy & Child Care, Health for Fitness, the India Today & the Media Transasia group for Travel, the then existing Spectrum group for Home Care). The inspirational editorial content will be co-developed by the participation of the traditional media house. The business model will be supported by advertisements specifically aligned with the editorial content.

I pursued this idea with single minded focus for nearly a year. I also explored the possibility of talking to publishers of technical journals on content topics such as “Fire & Safety” topics that had a more industrial or commercial audience (one of the challenges nine years back was that home PC and broadband penetration was not very strong). Our idea used to invariably meet with interest and we would have several rounds of meetings but only one occasion did we come : anywhere close to signing a deal. That was with the India Today group in the content area of Travel. But then our sponsor within the India Today group was Arun Katyar, an orginal Internet visionary. A seasoned media professional, Arun was the COO of the India Today Online venture. Today he is the CEO of SEraja, a Web 2.0 venture set up by the original Net entrepreneur: Rajesh Jain. Check it out at http://company.seraja.com/management.htm

Getting back to http://www.bhg.com/. Why is that nine years later, Mr. Hickey is still searching for the Holy Grail? It is a fairly straightforward idea end of the day. I am trying to understand what is it that has taken it so long:

1)The implementation is not as simple as it looks. Creating a database of products and services and targeting it to a content area is more difficult than it looks. Hmm …I don’t quite believe that. Do you?
2) The traditional media has been just too traditional to take advantage of these opportunities. That is more likely.
3) A decade later, online content is still in its early days of development. I was playing around with www.bhg.com and was frankly annoyed by the pop-up advertisements. Great web content requires still remains an aspiration.
I am seeking to understand this ...comment on.