VIEQUES, PR — The massive reach of YouTube has drawn in a new range of advertisers to sight, sound and motion for the first time due in part to the site’s audience composition, says Rob Norman, Chief Global Digital Officer, GroupM Worldwide, during a deep-dive interview about online video at the Beet.TV Executive Retreat.

The YouTube audience is not the same as TV, and is more dominated by young males than TV, which skews slightly female and is more “densely watched by people in their 40s and 50s,” Norman says. “Online video is no longer a curiosity that hangs off the side of our media plan; it is properly baked in…online video is opening sight, sound and motion to a set of brands that might not have done it because the access price to TV was too high.”

Programmatic buying in online video is still developing, he adds. The inventory for programmatic isn’t widely available because TV extensions in online video are still packaged as multi screen offerings, rather than for real-time buying. “When that becomes available programmatically, the amount of programmatic advertising in online video will increases,” he says.

Likewise, YouTube will likely see a boost in programmatic this year if it packages content in channels, Norman adds.