• by Karl Greenberg , March 4, 2011

Internet radio company Pandora is launching its largest brand partnership ever -- with Toyota. The multi-year program, "Legends & Icons," pairs Toyota vehicles with musical genres and artists.

The campaign will run across all of the Pandora internet radio advertising platforms and will feature exclusive musical content.

The campaign -- which launched March 4 and runs through the beginning of 2013, targeting adults 18-49 -- starts with Highlander SUV advertising content on Pandora's Top 40 genre station. Every month hereafter, a different Toyota vehicle will be advertised on a specific Pandora genre station. The program will run across the Web, mobile, iPad and on other digital consumer electronic devices.

Pandora and Toyota say they are planning "exclusive creative elements," including video and curated "mixtape" stations created by the artists themselves that include new music.

Toyota came up with the pairing for each vehicle, according to the automaker, with the genre/vehicle pairing driven by internal market research on musical tastes of owners of the company's fleet.

Toyota first announced at CES in Las Vegas this year that it had inked a deal with Pandora that puts the Web radio platform in Toyota vehicles via Toyota's Entune telematics platform. The company says it will announce which vehicles will have the technology later this year.

Pandora has inked similar deals over the past year. The company inked a deal with Ford last year that included a cause marketing program. Mini streams Pandora with its Mini Connected platform and Chevrolet with MyLink. Pandora, through a deal with Pioneer, started selling an in-vehicle device of its own in March that lets consumers stream Pandora from their iPhones.

Tim Westergren, Pandora's founder, said at last year's IAB Mixx Conference in New York that in-vehicle radio is the holy grail for the company, which has over 65 million users, about 65% of whom listen on mobile devices. "We are excited about the prospect of making Pandora as ubiquitous as broadcast radio," he said at the time.