Honeyshed, Publicis Groupe’s attempt to combine the pop culture entertainment elements of MTV and the home shopping aspects of QVC, achieved the success of neither and is therefore going out of business, Adweek reported. The Paris-based ad holding company created the site about a year-and-a-half ago with Droga5, the New York ad boutique run by David Droga, the former worldwide creative director for Publicis Worldwide. Essentially, Publicis decided that amid the growing financial pressures on the media industry, it didn’t see any purpose in pumping more money into the project. All 10 staffers who worked on Honeyshed will be laid off.

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After coming out of beta in November, Honeyshed execs expected it would reach 550,000 visitors a month after launch and 2 million by the end of this year. It also vowed to generate 9 million content views through 2009. But by the end of December, the site came up woefully short of its target, attracting only 117,000 uniques, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR), as numbers trailed off as the company was forced to cut back on advertising.