YouTube Sees Growing Share of Consumers Eager to Watch Its Videos

YouTube has long been known as a place popular among younger viewers, but what happens when those people get older?

For Brian Albert, the executive who represents the Google video-sharing service in its negotiations with Madison Avenue, the answer is simple: They keep watching YouTube.

“The older millennials will turn 45 this year, and they really are the first generation to grow up with a supercomputer in their pocket. To them, there really is no difference between streaming a video on their TV screen and scrolling video in a feed” says Albert, managing director of YouTube Media Partnerships & Creative Works for Google, during a recent interview. “As they grow older, we just don’t expect them to consume media the way their parents did.”

As executives from Google and YouTube will make plain during a presentation to advertisers Wednesday evening, now people in older cohorts are well-versed in watching selections on YouTube. YouTube is one of a parade of large media companies making a pitch to marketers as part of the “upfront,” the annual sales market during which U.S. video companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory.

“It’s not just the younger audiences that are gravitating to YouTube,” says Albert. “It’s really all audiences.”

The aging of millennials can give advertisers new confidence in reaching their target demographics via YouTube, Albert says. “We know demographics don’t age, but generations do. That fact that these really influential consumers are now 45 or younger, in their peak earning years, is a really big deal,” Albert says. “They are filling in that 18 to 49 demo that really was at the heart of TV buying for decades.”