Last week two super affiliates/lead generation companies were acquired. First, Bazaar Advertising (Congrats Jon Lee on selling your company ;-) and to the guys at Azoogle) and JellyFish.

It's great to see affiliates grow up and get the exits they so deserve!

What struck me is how much the game has not changed very much. Bazaar built amazing technology and that is their secret sauce while JellyFish brought a new and interesting twist to what we know and love about loyalty sites (though I still bet they were bought for the tech platform).

Clearly affiliates can grow up demand hefty sums. JellyFish sold for $20 to $25mm (you can back out the numbers from this article), and Bazaar went for a nice price for tech exit rumor has it.

But, it's the same old game. Affiliates are powerful direct marketing companies, plain and simple and they can create shareholder value that potential buyers will want.

Remember, the big Web 1.0 affiliates that grew up and commanded hefty exits were DealTime (Shopping.com) at $560mm, BizRate/Shopzilla at $525mm, Lowermybills.com at $380mm and even Nextag at $1.2 billion. Anyone notice, most of these guys sold for more individually than the big 4 affiliate networks combined?

JellyFish and Bazaar exited quickly and sold mostly for their tech platforms. It will be interesting to see which of the Gen 2/Web 2.0 affiliates become more than just tech plays and exit for more than $500mm in the coming years.