The YouTube phenomenon continues to capture the attention of marketers who want to capture the younger demographics. Even we sometimes refer to the “YouTube generation”, assuming that online video is an under-25 pursuit. How accurate is that assumption?

At the Streaming Media conference in San Jose this week, Mary Hodder of Dabble pointed out that the average age of Internet video users is 39 years old (according to Harris Interactive). My first reaction was surprise. My second reaction was to wonder why that was surprising.

Online video is popping up everywhere. In news & entertainment, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (preferred news sources of the old, rich, and powerful) are right up there with USA Today and MTV at the leading edge of video content.

And in retail, it’s not just WillItBlend and American Apparel. Even Nieman Marcus is getting in the game! In fact the top Internet retailer, Amazon.com (who we’re proud to count as a SilverDock client), is leading the charge to offer video to its mass-market audience.

The statistics back them up. ComScore says that 24.8% of YouTube viewers are in households with incomes over $100,000 a year, and 44.2% of its viewers are between 35 and 54 years old.

So why the mis-perception? It’s another symptom of how fast the online video world is evolving. In 2005 and 2006, most consumers learned about online video from the short, funny, often-puerile clips on YouTube, and came to the reasonable conclusion that this was a young-person’s medium. With the rapid spread of online video into every nook and cranny of the Internet, that perception is outdated. It just may take another year or two for the conventional wisdom to catch up.

Filed under: YouTube, video