Volkswagen is certainly one of three automakers anticipated to promote throughout 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 patrons of adverts throughout the huge recreation — have been inconsistent with promoting throughout the Tremendous Bowl lately, with solely a handful placing out spots annually.
“It is undoubtedly been on the decline,” mentioned Sean Muller, CEO of advert information firm iSpot. “Autos are tightening their belts, they usually’re most likely pulling again on their budgets, and definitely that is mirrored. I believe the Tremendous Bowl is an effective barometer for all of this.”
Automakers accounted for 40% of Tremendous Bowl advert minutes in 2012, however dropped all the way in which to 7% by 2025, in line with iSpot. Solely three automakers are anticipated to air adverts, totaling roughly two minutes, throughout this 12 months’s recreation.
Tim Mahoney, a longtime automotive advertising and marketing govt, mentioned it is a balancing act in terms of Tremendous Bowl promoting. He mentioned an organization has to have the best product, advert marketing campaign, and, in fact, capital to face out and get a return on its funding.
“Tremendous Bowl is only a large platform, however it has gotten so costly,” Mahoney, who labored for GM, VW, Subaru and Porsche, informed CNBC. “There are typically fascinating methods to navigate round it. … Adjacencies might 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.
Outdoors of the Tremendous Bowl, automakers have elevated sports activities promoting and embraced extra streaming and regional promoting over nationwide attain, in line with iSpot.
“They are not slicing again in reside sports activities,” Muller mentioned, 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 mentioned they had been deterred because of the price — $8 million on common for a 30-second advert — and felt their advert {dollars} can be higher spent elsewhere.
“We’re going to actually unfold our efforts, so cash and creativity, over a 12 months,” mentioned Stellantis Chief Advertising and marketing 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 and marketing 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 throughout 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 “Massive Sport” 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 sort of discover a means 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 informed CNBC.
Witherspoon declined to debate the price of the spot, however confirmed it was lower than it might have spent to air a conventional Tremendous Bowl advert.
Others, equivalent 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 time Video games in Los Angeles.
“Tremendous Bowl is one second in time. The Olympics has so many verticals you’ll be able to dip into and inform these tales,” mentioned Ed Beadle, who leads advertising and marketing for American Honda Motor.
The opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics happened on Friday in Milan. It additionally kicks off a month that Comcast’s NBCUniversal — which will likely 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 recreation, as the one automaker to not prerelease its advert. The Detroit automaker is utilizing the Tremendous Bowl to launch its Cadillac F1 crew, together with revealing the look of its first livery automotive to a nationwide viewers.
The automaker final month confirmed a design prototype of the car in Detroit, together with on the metropolis’s auto present, however it has not launched any details about the industrial.
Toyota, the NFL’s official automotive companion, is anticipated to air two 30-second adverts centered on household connections.
One known as “Superhero Belt” reveals a grandson and a grandfather switching roles through the years and telling one another to safe their seatbelts. The opposite has not been launched.
Volkswagen’s advert resurrects the automaker’s well-known Nineteen Nineties marketing campaign for a brand new era of consumers, as a part of a advertising and marketing drive known as “The Nice Invitation: Drivers Wished.”
The brand new marketing campaign, together with a 30-second Tremendous Bowl spot, options most of the automaker’s automobiles being pushed round to Home of Ache’s 1992 hit “Bounce Round.”
— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.
Disclosure: CNBC father or mother Versant is carrying NBC Sports activities-produced Olympic protection on its networks, together with USA Community and CNBC.
