Audio ads on YouTube expand reach and grow brand awareness

Whether it’s to squeeze in a living room workout before dinner, catch up on a podcast or listen to a virtual concert on a Friday night, people are increasingly turning to YouTube as they spend more time at home. 

To help you tailor your media and creative approach to the different ways consumers are engaging with YouTube, we're introducing audio ads, our first ad format designed to connect your brand with audiences in engaged and ambient listening on YouTube. Audio ads, currently in beta, help you efficiently expand reach and grow brand awareness with audio-based creative and the same measurement, audience and brand safety features as your video campaigns.  

Reach more music fans

Music has always played an important role in culture and everyday lives. It’s a reliable way for you to capture an audience engaging with content they love, but for most brands, it’s untapped on YouTube. With music video streaming at an all time high on YouTube—more than 50 percent of logged-in viewers who consume music content in a day consume more than 10 minutes of music content—we’re introducing new solutions for your brand to be seen, heard and recognized alongside music content.¹ 

In addition to audio ads, we’re also launching dynamic music lineups, dedicated groups of music-focused channels across popular genres such as Latin music, K-pop, hip-hop and Top 100, as well as moods or interests like fitness, so you can easily reach music fans globally and drive results for your business. Music lineups and audio ads make it possible to be there, at scale, whether YouTube is being watched front and center or playing as the backdrop to daily life.

Amp up your brand message

Audio ads are characterized by creatives where the audio soundtrack plays the starring role in delivering your message. The visual component is typically a still image or simple animation. 

In our months of alpha testing, we found that more than 75 percent of measured audio ad campaigns on YouTube drove a significant lift in brand awareness.²

One of our early testers, Shutterfly, used audio ads to influence purchase consideration among interested shoppers, driving above benchmark lifts of 14 percent lift in ad recall and 2 percent lift in favorability among their target audience.

Find success with audio ads

When you’re preparing your audio ads campaign, keep in mind that audio should play the leading role. Think: If I close my eyes, I can still clearly understand what this ad is about. Be clear and specific with your message and pick a friendly, authentic voice to deliver it. If you aren’t sure what creative to use, you can use Video experiments to run a test and get results quickly and at no extra cost. 

Audio ads are available in beta 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 capabilities as your YouTube video campaigns. Using both video and audio ads together, you can reach more people, consuming content they love, with the ad format that’s best suited for their unique YouTube experience. 

To learn more about audio ads on YouTube, visit the Help Center or speak to your Google representative. 

^{1.  Internal YouTube Data, June 2020}

^{2. Google Internal data, Global , June 2019-March 2020}