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Swimming Against the Tide: Brian Wiegand Steers the Jellyfish Buying Engine

Written on
July 26th 2006
Author
by Lauren Kerensky  |
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These days, online shoppers are faced with hundreds of venue choices that allow them to find essentially any product and spend their cash. On June 26, another shopping network joined the roster — Jellyfish.com.

However, Jellyfish brings something different to the table, or better yet, to your wallet. Self-proclaimed the “Internet’s first buying engine,” Jellyfish has eliminated all advertising and instead shares its revenue with you, the consumer. Retailers are encouraged to use their advertising dollars to lower the end price of products and Jellyfish shares at least half of every dollar they earn when you shop and buy. Rather than rank retailers on the site in terms of how much they are spending on advertising, as many sites presently do, Jellyfish, currently in its beta stages, ranks product search results by the end price.

Jellyfish founders Brian Wiegand (CEO) and Mark McGuire (President) call it a shift from Pay Per Click to Value Per Action, or VPA, advertising. ADOTAS spoke recently with Brian Wiegand to get to the bottom of this new shopping animal.

Wiegand and McGuire had been observing the adverse relationship that consumers seemed to have with advertising. As people began purchasing Tivos and satellite radios, blocking pop-ups and turning blind eyes to online ads, the entrepreneurs sensed that much of conventional advertising was becoming ineffective.

“Interruptive advertising [that is] in your face can really upset a consumer and that type of advertising has really exhausted itself,” says Wiegand. “And you can only advertise and interrupt so many people so many ways before they ignore it.” On the retailer side of things, methods like the Price Per Click model are currently beginning to struggle with click fraud, complicated web analytics, and the basic fact that many advertising dollars miss. To Wiegand and McGuire it seemed like the perfect opportunity to create a system where shoppers actually wanted to receive advertising if it somehow benefited them.

The Jellyfish model was the ultimate solution, creating an environment where, as Wiegand puts it, “the more advertising you receive, the more value it is to you, the consumer.” The CEO believes that the VPA model is an advertising trend that has been around for years. Any instance that provides a consumer with money or some value for exposure to advertising follows this model. Superbowl ads, for example, provide entertainment in exchange for interaction with the ad. Wiegand feels that many people are coming to terms with the fact that advertising is moving to an environment where consumers will have the ability and technology to control when they interact with ads. Unless there is a tangible benefit that results from interacting with advertisements, the ad will not succeed.

In developing the logistics of the Jellyfish system, the founders wanted everything to be simple and appealing to the average consumer. Issues of advertising models and transparency and paying for consumer attention would be reserved for the retailer relationship. All that consumers would need to know is that when you make a purchase in the same way you would on any shopping site, at Jellyfish, you get a share in cash back or the advertising that is spent to get your attention.



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Reader Comments.

The evolution of CPA is building… Accoona launched last week… Bill Gross and his Snap.com is still under wraps…
I wonder if Google has a CPA system hidden in the bowels of their Mountain View campus…

Posted by AussieWebmaster | 12:23 pm on July 26, 2006.

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