Mixtures of the ionic liquid (IL) [C(6)mim](+)[Tf2N](-) and acetonitrile have been investigated by a combination of dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS) and ultrafast transient absorption techniques using the molecular probe 12'-apo-beta-carotenoic-12'-acid (12'CA). Steady-state absorption spectra of the 12'CA molecule have also been recorded. The position of the probe's S-0 -> S-2 absorption maximum correlates linearly with the polarizability of the mixture, suggesting that the bulk composition is a good approximation to the local composition. The lifetime tau(1) of the S-1/ICT state of 12'CA varies rather smoothly with composition between the value for pure acetonitrile (42 ps) and neat [C(6)mim](+)[Tf2N](-) (94 ps). At low IL contents there appears to be an influence of discrete ion pairs. Employing static dielectric constants from the DRS experiments, one finds that the lifetime of the probe in the IL mixtures is shorter than that in pure organic solvents with the same polarity parameter. This suggests an increased stabilization of the S-1/ICT state in IL-containing mixtures, most likely due to IL-specific Coulombic interactions between the cation and the negative end of the probe's dipole. An ultrafast solvation component is observed which is ca. 0.5 ps in pure acetonitrile, and approaches the value for the pure IL (2.0 ps) already around x(IL) = 0.3. This is interpreted in terms of an efficient perturbation of the cooperative solvation response of acetonitrile by the presence of small amounts of IL and possibly also the viscosity increase when adding IL. This view is also supported by the increase of the average longitudinal relaxation time of acetonitrile upon addition of small IL amounts extracted from the DRS experiments.