• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 26, 2012

Several leading online video technology vendors have inked fresh partner deals and rolled out new features in the last week, including Taboola, Digitalsmiths and Kaltura. Tracking particular deals, such as these, can offer insight into emerging trends in Web video.

For starters, apparel and footwear retailer Zappos paired up with Kaltura  to use its enterprise video tools to power online video on the Zappos site. Zappos is a big win for Kaltura given the prominence of the brand. But the deal also underscores the importance of online video as a marketing tool for e-commerce. The retailer will use the video player, interactive features and also Kaltura’s analytics to understand how its visitors are viewing and using video. Zappos senior manager Laurie Williams said in a statement that Zappos has already found that video on product pages has increased purchases and lowered the number of returns.

Then there’s Digitalsmiths, which is adding the tracking of real-time social buzz into its video discovery tools, the company said. Digitalsmiths targets service providers, programmers and consumer manufacturers, among others. Building in social chatter is a smart move that speaks to the growing importance of social media recommendations amongst consumers. Increasingly, consumers are learning about new shows or tuning into them after hearing about them via Twitter or Facebook.

Also, video recommendation service Taboola said it’s working with live news site Livestation to layer in video recommendations to news feeds. This is another deal to watch because it highlights the need for publishers to surface potentially relevant videos to users to keep them on their sites longer. The deal was first reported via Beet.TV.