Tribal Fusion's network enables each campaign to get smarter over time, informing clients just which data points are making consumers convert -- or not.

Toby Gabriner, president of Tribal Fusion, used amusing, pre-produced video to set up his instructive session at the iMedia Brand Summit in Bonita Springs, Fla. The video introduced the tribe of "Tribal Airlines" first, then a husband and wife consumer duo -- the Crawfords -- who go online to seek travel deals after watching "Survivor: Hawaii." These two short videos humanized the core elements of what Tribal Fusion does.

Hank van Niekerk, Tribal's vice president for its Publisher Network, then introduced just how precisely Tribal's network can target consumers like this couple. Tribal's network aggregates numerous data points in its targeting -- from Zip Code and other demographic data, to third-party behavioral and other psychographic data, including search data -- bringing to bear unique ways of integrating with users. Van Niekerk showed how deeply the data dive is on any given campaign, as the "quality score" provided by Tribal's network enables each campaign to get smarter over time, informing clients just which data points are making consumers convert -- or not.

"Our relationships with publishers are very deep, enabling us to do very specific things to move the needle for our advertisers," Gabriner said.  "There are many different ways we can insert -- in real-time -- numerous, bespoke offers when we know exactly what consumers are looking for."

What Tribal's business focuses on is starting and then maintaining dialogue on behalf of brands with their consumers. From building awareness with consumers, enabling dialogue throughout the entire brand engagement cycle, creating well-executed interactive campaigns that can help produce more than just buying cycles, Tribal actually paves the way toward something more closely resembling brand allegiance.

In the example set up by the video, the married couple hopes to go to Hawaii, but on a budget. By drilling down into their web browsing and other data, the campaign (for Tribal Airlines) served the right creative (for budget travel packages to Hawaii) at the right time (when the couple was visiting travel sites to research budget packages). 

The Crawfords got to enjoy their trip to Hawaii, and they flew on Tribal Airlines. By serving the most contextually relevant creative units in the most contextually relevant sequence -- and at the right time -- the triangle of benefit for consumer, marketer, and publisher was complete.

Mark Naples is managing partner for WIT Strategy.