That being said, I won’t pretend like the following is a tip I got or anything, but based on a seemingly innocent email I got, I think Tribal Fusion might be prepping for some kind of sale.  When it comes to online ad networks that are always the subject of a merger or acquisition, Valueclick comes to mind.  As a publicly traded independent ad network, Valueclick could very well be acquired one day by a wide range of players.  But when it comes to leading private ad networks, there are many more, and the largest is Tribal Fusion.

I think Tribal Fusion has for some time been approached by private equity bankers, VCs, and would-be acquirers.

But I suspect something is up now… I’m not sure if it would be a merger/acquisition or an IPO, but given Tribal Fusion’s large reach, revenue base and operating history, I suspect it could very well IPO.

The timing is both horrible and excellent.

The timing is horrible because in case you have been hibernating, the bears are out and the markets are spooked.  This morning the Dow fell 400 points in the first minute of trading.  Thankfully the market has recovered but we’re still not out of the woods.

The timing for a Tribal Fusion deal however is excellent because last Friday, Slide raised a whopping $50M on a $500M valuation.  The rationale (if we can call it that) was not that Slide was worth $500M as a widget maker/enabler, but rather, it was an ad network for slides… one day, maybe.

If that nutty rationale is the case, then it’s worth noting that Tribal Fusion’s paper value in this round at $550M was almost twice the final sale value of Blue Lithium to Yahoo! in 2007.  It was also a bit under Yahoo!’s purchase price of Right Media.

Tribal Fusion is ranked 7th in terms of ad networks:

Yes, I know, Slide is very different from Blue Lithium and Right Media, but it actually makes money and is in fact an ad network… and not a speculative maybe-play on the hype that is social networking.  I am not being critical of Slide at all, by the way, I am just saying that if Slide can command a $550M valuation for maybe being something one day, then by that logic Tribal Fusion’s bells might be ringing pretty soon.

After all, once you reach the people, then you can always change what you are reaching them with… this is sort of the strategy with WatchMojo.com’s syndication network.  We distribute our video content everywhere.  We don’t pretend to know what the future of video advertising will precisely look like… but as streams become monetized (just as search did in 2000-2001 or so) then the reach becomes far more valuable.  That is the bet investors made on Slide… while that remains theoretical, Tribal Fusion is far passed the theory stage, at this stage.