YouTube is helping advertisers better reach music fans with new audio ads and music lineups.

As people stay home amid the pandemic and large-scale concerts and music venues remain closed, YouTube says more consumers have turned to the platform to listen to music as they go about their daily lives. In an effort to connect marketers to these listeners, YouTube is introducing audio ads in beta. These ads are characterized by creative where the audio soundtrack plays the starring role in delivering the brand’s message. The visual component is typically a still image or simple animation.

Music lineups are dedicated channels across genres of music like Latin, K-pop, Country and Hip-Hop or even moods like relaxation or fitness, where marketers can choose to run ads. Dynamic lineups are locally relevant by country and can include seasonal events, travel and other topics. YouTube Select Music Lineups consist of the top 5% of premium music content across YouTube globally, such as official music videos. If a brand prefers to run ads in what’s popular at any given moment, they can buy against the Top 100 lineup, which is powered by YouTube Charts.

Audio ads have certainly been a growing category of interest. Amazon has veered heavily into audio ads already on its Alexa device.

Shutterfly is an early tester of audio ads on YouTube. According to YouTube data, Shutterfly’s audio ads led to a 14% lift in ad recall and 2% lift in favorability among its target audience.

For brands looking to dip their toes in audio, the key is making sure audio plays the leading role. YouTube suggests closing your eyes and listening to the ad to make sure you can clearly understand what the ad is about. Audio messaging should be clear and specific and brands should pick a friendly and authentic voice to deliver its messaging. If a brand isn’t sure what creative to use, they can utilize YouTube’s video experiments to run a test and get results quickly at no extra cost.

Audio ads are available via auction on Google Ads and Display & Video 360 on a CPM basis with the same audience-targeting options, bidding strategies and brand-lift measurement as available for YouTube video campaigns.

YouTube boasts that 2 billion logged-in viewers watch a music video each month as of June 2020, and more than 50% of logged-in viewers consume more than 10 minutes of music content in a day. The company also says 85% of music video viewing on the platform happens in the foreground with people actually watching music videos and live concerts.