Smack Shopping-The Internet’s First Shopping Game Show
Since our launch in June of 2006, Jellyfish has been working hard to drive adoption of a new form of online advertising we call Value Per Action that eliminates the waste from traditional advertising and transforms it into added customer savings (you can read about VPA here and our vision of advertising here).
With Jellyfish taking the high road against traditional forms of biased, interruptive advertising, many questioned how we were going to attract customers and generate awareness for our brand and our shopping search engine. Not a bad question and one we asked ourselves many times. Television ads, billboards, and even Google keywords were out of the question. But what was left?
The answer for Jellyfish has been something we call Smack Shopping. The Internet’s first live shopping game show, Smack Shopping combines the fun of a game show with the fantastic deals generated by the Jellyfish cash back auction. Smack shows run every business day at 12 CST and include multiple Smack Auctions where a limited quantity of products are offered for sale at increasing cash discounts. Participants have the chance to buy the hottest online products at remarkable discounts, play games for prizes and interact with a virtual community of other Smack shoppers (a Smack by definition is a group of Jellyfish).
To our knowledge, Smack Shopping is the first game show broadcast live to an online audience that actively participates in the event. There are other companies working on streaming video plus chat, see for example Pete Cashmore’s discussion of Lycos Cinema here and the much anticipated launch of Joost here, but Smack Shopping does more than view pre-assembled video.
Fueled by Jellyfish cash back, the game and the entertainment is actually advertising, but I doubt any of our users would view it as such. It’s a customer acquisition strategy that is consistent with the Jellyfish promise. Instead of spending money interrupting people with traditional advertising, Jellyfish is using advertising dollars to create compelling game show like content that consumers seek out and invite into their lives. And it is working. From the beta launch of Smack Shopping on November 1 until today, Jellyfish has grown its user base over 5X, with Smack Shows regularly engaging 10’s of thousands of online shoppers for an hour or more of fun every day.
Advertising as content. It is a trend we are going to see more of as consumers gain more control over where they devote their attention and advertising seeks out new ways to be relevant. We view Smack Shopping as permission-based, engaging advertising at its best.
February 19th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Hi, Mark! The Smack is attracting members, but once you’ve acquired them, what are you doing to make them shop through the regular shopping section of the site?
As I understand it, the advertising dollars are paying for the losses on the Smack, but if those members aren’t generating revenue for the site, what happens when your venture capital runs out?
Maybe the new members are generating substantial revenue — I’m just making the assumption based on my own personal experience as a referrer. I have 185 referrals but have only earned somewhere around $22 from their shopping. As I understand the referral structure, this $22 represents half of what JF earned from them in shoppng commission. Maybe you can see why I’m concerned.
Are you running stats on your members? The percentage of Smack winners who go on to make purchases from the regular shopping section? The sales generated from the email links in Aaron’s daily Smack Reminder emails? How much various other areas of the site are accessed in comparison to the Smack Shopping area? Are you running demographics on your Smack Shopping winners vs. those making purchases in the rest of the site?
I love Jellyfish, but I’m concerned that the Smack is taking over the site’s focus and that the giveaways and fantastic bargains are not sustainable in the long run.
Would appreciate any reassurance you could offer!
February 21st, 2007 at 10:34 am
Thanks so much for your comments Becky. We love having your contributions to Smack Shopping and appreciate the referrals you have made from your site. Even in the very early stages of Smack Shopping, the show is working in driving awareness of our brand, additional retailer partners and additional sales for Jellyfish.com. I’m not sure why your referral revenue has been so low to date, but I can tell you that your experience is atypical. Remember, you earn revenue on referrals for an entire year, so I would expect your fees to pick up. I can also tell you that we are working on many of the questions you have raised in your comment. In the months ahead, you will see a more consistent and sustained effort by Jellyfish to connect our Smack Shoppers to the benefits available at Jellyfish.com. Again, thanks for your support of Jellyfish!
February 28th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[…] Piper Jaffray just released an extensive new report entitled “The User Revolution” that describes how the Internet is empowering consumers and dramatically changing consumer content consumption patterns (MediaPost summary of the report here).[…]
April 9th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
[…] As we’ve been saying at Jellyfish for some time, you need to give consumers a reason to engage with your advertising, not just figure out new ways to interrupt them. We’ve tried to stand behind that belief with both Smack Shopping (advertising transformed into entertainment) and our main Jellyfish.com search (advertising transformed into cash back savings). […]
March 4th, 2008 at 2:49 am
1031 Exchanges - The Legal Way To Defer Investment Property Capital Gains Tax
With the booming property prices of recent years, more and more people are finding themselves facing a large tax bill when they come to sell their investment properties.