Jellyfish Debuts New Shopping Search Engine That Shares Revenue Directly With End-Consumers and Eliminates Click Fraud for Merchants

WebKnowHow
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; 04:09 AM

Jellyfish unveiled the public beta of Jellyfish.com, a Robin Hood-like comparison shopping engine that shares back a percentage of the advertising revenue consumers generate through their shopping activity to create lower prices on everything they buy. By improving the underlying advertising model for search, Jellyfish.com has created a more efficient way of matching up buyers and sellers in a patent-pending marketplace in which merchants can eliminate interruptive advertising and replace it with added value for online shoppers.

"At Jellyfish.com, we do something completely different than other search engines; we share our revenue directly with our customers," said Brian Wiegand, CEO of Jellyfish. "This allows us to create the perfect search engine for buying online, a place where consumers can quickly find the best product for their needs without biased advertising, and where they directly share in the competition by merchants for their sale."

"The Jellyfish model really levels the playing field for retailers," said Adrienne Hartman, Internet Business Manager at ShoeMall.com. "With the transparent Jellyfish model, ShoeMall competes and the customer is more satisfied with her experience, knowing that she got the best price possible in the end. Because Jellyfish aligns its incentives with us, we can use our advertising dollars in a new way that directly benefits our end customers and eliminates concerns over click fraud."

How Jellyfish.com Works

Consumers use Jellyfish.com like they would any comparison shopping engine to easily search, compare, and select the right product from a trusted online store. But what makes Jellyfish different than other shopping search engines is that consumers earn automatic cash-back savings on their purchases because Jellyfish shares back at least half of the advertising revenue generated from each sale. And the Jellyfish.com marketplace maximizes those savings, because retailers compete to get to the top of the search rankings by increasing the amount of cash back provided to end consumers. This creates a competitive buying environment where consumers search and merchants bid with their ad dollars to lower end prices. The same kind of advertising auction happens every day at the major Pay Per Click search engines, but those engines keep all of the monetary value the advertising competition generates.

Jellyfish is able to create this new retail marketplace because it has eliminated the misalignment of incentives, inefficiencies and hidden costs of the Pay Per Click search advertising model. At Jellyfish, merchants only pay for successful sales, eliminating all risk from their advertising and allowing them to refocus those previously inefficient advertising dollars on added customer value.

"We think the Jellyfish.com model represents the future of online advertising," said Mark McGuire, President of Jellyfish. "For advertising to survive in a world where the consumer has ultimate control, it must be directly valuable. That is the major shift we are making at Jellyfish; turning advertising dollars into added customer value that they seek out. Instead of Price Per Click (PPC), we call it Value Per Action (VPA). This system allows consumers to turn the tables on advertising, and make it work directly for them when they are shopping online."

The Jellyfish.com beta web site will open for business with over 5 million products from dozens of product categories, such as consumer electronics, clothing, books, games, sporting goods, and many others. During the beta period, the company will be rapidly expanding the number retailers and products in its system, and enhancing its search features and functionality. A full consumer launch is scheduled for this Fall. The service is free and available now at www.Jellyfish.com.