Gartner: 'Protail' Video Content Jumps 600%

Written by Steve Donohue

Wednesday, November 12. 2008 at 05:55 PM EST Post a comment

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An army of skilled or professionally trained videographers shooting high-quality content for Websites such as YouTube Inc. and Metacafe Inc. may represent one of the fastest-growing segments of online video.

Many of these producers of "protail video," as Gartner Inc. coins the segment in a report released Wednesday, are professional writers that delved into the online video world last fall when members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike.

While the writers are back at work, the strike led to the creation of new Web shows produced by striking writers such as Dr. Horrible, which Gartner says generated more than 1.1 million streams on Hulu LLC .

"Protail [content] is all well lit, editorial sound, brand safe content. There is an explosion of that kind of content coming online," said Tremor Media senior director or corporate communications Corey Kronengold, whose clients include hundreds of Web publishers that run protail videos. According to Gartner, advertising revenue generated from protail videos will hit $75 million in 2008, and jump to more than $1.5 billion by 2012.

It typically costs digital studios $2,000 to $5,000 to produce a four-minute protail video episode, Gartner says. The hottest sectors in protail video are how-to shows, scripted sitcoms and dramas, and new forms of reality shows.

While it's not mentioned in the Gartner report, one of the best protail sites is Funny or Die , which was founded by comedians Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. The site has produced several popular viral videos, including The Landlord, which has generated about 60.2 million page views for the Website since debuting last year.

The definition of protail, according to Gartner, is the "segment between professionally produced content and user-generated content." It says most protail videos "include higher-quality production and content produced in a more consistent or episodic manner."

While terms like protail may generate some confusion -- inside and outside the new media industry -– Kronengold says it's an accurate way to describe the content niche. "It's a good descriptor," he said.