Volkswagen is considered one of three automakers anticipated to promote through the Tremendous Bowl in 2026.
Courtesy VW
DETROIT — Automakers are largely sitting on the promoting sidelines throughout this 12 months’s Tremendous Bowl amid uncertainty within the U.S. automotive trade involving gross sales, tariffs and rules.
Carmakers — traditionally main consumers of adverts through the large sport — have been inconsistent with promoting through the Tremendous Bowl lately, with solely a handful placing out spots every year.
“It is undoubtedly been on the decline,” stated Sean Muller, CEO of advert information firm iSpot. “Autos are tightening their belts, and so they’re most likely pulling again on their budgets, and definitely that is mirrored. I believe the Tremendous Bowl is an efficient barometer for all of this.”
Automakers accounted for 40% of Tremendous Bowl advert minutes in 2012, however dropped all the best way to 7% by 2025, in accordance with iSpot. Solely three automakers are anticipated to air adverts, totaling roughly two minutes, throughout this 12 months’s sport.
Tim Mahoney, a longtime automotive advertising govt, stated it is a balancing act with regards to Tremendous Bowl promoting. He stated an organization has to have the proper product, advert marketing campaign, and, in fact, capital to face out and get a return on its funding.
“Tremendous Bowl is only a huge platform, nevertheless it has gotten so costly,” Mahoney, who labored for GM, VW, Subaru and Porsche, instructed CNBC. “There are typically attention-grabbing methods to navigate round it. … Adjacencies could be good.”
Throughout Mahoney’s tenure, Subaru turned the presenting sponsor of Animal Planet’s Pet Bowl and GM’s Chevrolet model “blacked out” TV screens simply forward of the Tremendous Bowl for an advert for its in-vehicle Wi-Fi in 2015.
Exterior of the Tremendous Bowl, automakers have elevated sports activities promoting and embraced extra streaming and regional promoting over nationwide attain, in accordance with iSpot.
“They are not slicing again in reside sports activities,” Muller stated, citing iSpot information that automakers now characterize roughly 60% of spend on reside sports activities.
Autos out
Automotive executives who spoke to CNBC about not promoting throughout this 12 months’s Tremendous Bowl stated they had been deterred as a result of price — $8 million on common for a 30-second advert — and felt their advert {dollars} could be higher spent elsewhere.
“We’re going to actually unfold our efforts, so cash and creativity, over a 12 months,” stated Stellantis Chief Advertising Officer Olivier Francois, who’s well-known for previous Tremendous Bowl adverts. “There is not any want for a peak or one thing in February.”
Stellantis, which is within the midst of an organization turnaround plan, will focus this 12 months on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. as its main advertising push along with extra business-oriented spending and a provocative social media marketing campaign for Jeep that includes a singing fish it launched this week.
Nissan Motor, which final marketed through the Tremendous Bowl in 2022, can be experimenting this 12 months with parallel promoting.
The Japan-based automaker on Friday launched a comedic, high-energy “Large Recreation” social media advert selling a chips-and-dip holder for its Nissan Rogue SUV. The “Nissan Dip Seat” advert stars chef and “The Bear” actor Matty Matheson selling the fictional product. It additionally promotes a sweepstakes to win one of many automobiles.
“One of many key issues for us is that we needed to type of discover a approach that was extra social in nature. It has been part of what our general technique has been this 12 months,” Nissan U.S. CMO Allyson Witherspoon instructed CNBC.
Witherspoon declined to debate the price of the spot, however confirmed it was lower than it could have spent to air a conventional Tremendous Bowl advert.
Others, akin to Honda Motor, will look to the Olympics as their main advert spending. Honda is sponsoring U.S. Olympic and Paralympic groups for the Winter Video games in Milan this 12 months in addition to on the 2028 Summer season Video games in Los Angeles.
“Tremendous Bowl is one second in time. The Olympics has so many verticals you possibly can dip into and inform these tales,” stated Ed Beadle, who leads advertising for American Honda Motor.
The opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics passed off on Friday in Milan. It additionally kicks off a month that Comcast’s NBCUniversal — which shall be airing the Olympics, Tremendous Bowl and NBA All-Star weekend — has coined “Legendary February.”
2026 adverts
GM stays a wild card for this 12 months’s sport, as the one automaker to not prerelease its advert. The Detroit automaker is utilizing the Tremendous Bowl to launch its Cadillac F1 group, together with revealing the look of its first livery automotive to a nationwide viewers.
The automaker final month confirmed a design prototype of the automobile in Detroit, together with on the metropolis’s auto present, nevertheless it has not launched any details about the business.
Toyota, the NFL’s official automotive companion, is anticipated to air two 30-second adverts targeted on household connections.
One known as “Superhero Belt” exhibits a grandson and a grandfather switching roles over time and telling one another to safe their seatbelts. The opposite has not been launched.
Volkswagen’s advert resurrects the automaker’s well-known Nineties marketing campaign for a brand new technology of shoppers, as a part of a advertising drive known as “The Nice Invitation: Drivers Needed.”
The brand new marketing campaign, together with a 30-second Tremendous Bowl spot, options lots of the automaker’s automobiles being pushed round to Home of Ache’s 1992 hit “Soar Round.”
— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.
Disclosure: CNBC guardian Versant is carrying NBC Sports activities-produced Olympic protection on its networks, together with USA Community and CNBC.
