Jellyfish or Lutefisk?

Microsoft recently coughed up some change and bought comparative shopping site Jellyfish.com. Jellyfish offers its customers a cut off the advertising revenue by offering rebates on purchases made through the site. (A cool 50% of the advertising revenue is given back to the customers.) According to Microsoft, this acquisition will give them a way to augment their e-commerce and search offerings. Microsoft offered no specific details about the strategy or the purchase price, but it seems like this deal is consistent with Microsoft’s high potential “small purchase” strategy.

Jellyfish is a Madison, Wisconsin based company started in mid-2005. So far, Jellyfish.com says it lists at least 5 million products with a "pay per action," charge rather than pay per click. This value based model is a growing trend in the market and I personally think this is the model of the future.

Only time will tell if this will tell if this will stink like Lutefisk or smell like money for Microsoft.