TribalFusion to Build Out In-Stream Contextual Video Network

ROO and TribalFusion are planning to work together to improve how video offers are targeted against text-based content online.

The companies’ joint announcement today is light on details and heavy on bombast (the deal “will forever alter how consumers view pre-roll advertising,” and will make “clicking through to a video link a far more compelling proposition than ever before,” etc.) but the gist of it is that sites in the Tribal Fusion network will be able to offer video content and ads relevant to the Web page a person is on.

The example given is that of a person reading a newspaper site article about indie bands, who is then offered videos about the music discussed on the page they’re reading. People who watch the video will then be able to purchase that music if they want it.

Part of what’s interesting here is that Tribal Fusion appears to be growing its pre-roll ad inventory by partnering with a video content aggregator (ROO) and serving video content into display ad space. I can’t be sure how the final iteration of the agreement will work out, but by using inventory on its partner sites to invite Web users to click content related to a page they’re on, the company increases the amnount of high value in-stream inventory it can sell. As a bonus, Tribal Fusion can contextually target those pre-roll and in-stream ads, since it will be able to infer the topic of the video.

Who knows if any of this will actually happen, but the potential is there.