YouTube creates tool to align brands with Gen Z music tastes

Advertisers can buy around a lineup of videos featuring songs that are on-trend among the in-demand demographic.

YouTube has launched the Gen Z Music Lineup, an effort to make it easier for brands to show up next to the music content that is most in-demand with younger audiences.

The lineup is created based on data from audio, long-form and YouTube Shorts videos that identifies songs currently trending with users between the ages of 18 and 24. From there, Google uses its AI to packages relevant videos featuring the music into a lineup.

Advertisers can then buy around this lineup, which helps “ensure that their brand shows up near media that uses the music this cohort has on repeat, helping their brand be seen at the forefront of culture,” according to a blog post from Brian Anderson, YouTube’s global head of music and audio.

The dynamic lineup is now available to advertisers globally through Google Ads.

Google began piloting the Gen Z Music Lineup earlier this year. The company has also been piloting a similar tool to identify trending songs specifically on Shorts, YouTube’s short-form TikTok competitor.

According to Numeris, the average Anglophone between the ages of 18 and 35 spends an average of 8.3 hours on YouTube weekly, with Francophones in the same age groups spending 7.8 hours. Last year, MTM research found that three in five Canadian adults used YouTube to listen to music at least once in a given month.

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