DETROIT — Automakers are largely sitting on the advertising sidelines during this year’s Super Bowl amid uncertainty in the U.S. automotive industry involving sales, tariffs and regulations.

Carmakers — historically major buyers of ads during the big game — have been inconsistent with advertising during the Super Bowl in recent years, with only a handful putting out spots each year.

“It’s definitely been on the decline,” said Sean Muller, CEO of ad data company iSpot. “Autos are tightening their belts, and they’re probably pulling back on their budgets, and certainly that’s reflected. I think the Super Bowl is a good barometer for all of this.”

Automakers accounted for 40% of Super Bowl ad minutes in 2012, but dropped all the way to 7% by 2025, according to iSpot. Only three automakers are expected to air ads, totaling roughly two minutes, during this year’s game.

Tim Mahoney, a longtime automotive marketing executive, said it’s a balancing act when it comes to advertising during the Super Bowl. He said a company has to have the right product, ad campaign, and, of course, capital to stand out and get a return on their investment.

“Super Bowl is just a massive platform, but it has gotten so expensive,” Mahoney, who worked for GM, VW, Subaru and Porsche, told CNBC. “There are sometimes interesting ways to navigate around it. … Adjacencies can be smart.”

During Mahoney’s tenure, Subaru became the presenting sponsor of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl and GM’s Chevrolet brand “blacked out” TV screens just ahead of the Super Bowl for an ad for its in-vehicle Wi-Fi in 2015.

Outside of the Super Bowl, automakers have grown sports advertising in addition to embracing more streaming and regional advertising over a national reach, according to iSpot.

“They’re not cutting back in live sports,” Muller said, citing iSpot data that automakers now represent roughly 60% of spend on live sports.

Automotive executives who spoke to CNBC about not advertising during this year’s Super Bowl said they were deterred due to the cost — $8 million on average for a 30-second ad — and felt their ad dollars would be better spent elsewhere.

“We are going to really spread our efforts, so money and creativity, over a year,” said Stellantis Chief Marketing Officer Olivier Francois, who is well known for past Super Bowl ads. “There’s no need for a peak or something in February.”

Stellantis, which is in the midst of a company turnaround plan, will focus instead this year on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. as its major marketing push in addition to more business-oriented spending and a provocative social media campaign for Jeep featuring a singing fish it launched this week.

Nissan Motor, which last advertised during the Super Bowl in 2022, also is experimenting this year with parallel advertising.

The Japan-based automaker on Friday released a comedic, high-energy “Big Game” social media ad promoting a chips and dip holder for its Nissan Rogue SUV. The “Nissan Dip Seat” ad stars chef and “The Bear” actor Matty Matheson promoting the fictional product. It also promotes a sweepstakes to win one of the vehicles.

“One of the key things for us is that we wanted to kind of find a way that was more social in nature. It’s been a part of what our overall strategy has been this year,” Nissan U.S. CMO Allyson Witherspoon told CNBC.

Witherspoon declined to discuss the cost of the spot, but confirmed it was less than it would have spent to air a traditional Super Bowl ad.

Others such as Honda Motor will look to the Olympics as their major ad spending. Honda is sponsoring U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams for the Winter Games in Milan this year as well as at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“Super Bowl is one moment in time. The Olympics has so many verticals you can dip into and tell these stories,” said Ed Beadle, who leads marketing for American Honda Motor.

The opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics is set to take place Friday in Milan. It also kicks off a month that Comcast’s NBCUniversal — which will be airing the Olympics, Super Bowl and NBA All-Star weekend — has coined “Legendary February.”

GM remains a wild card for this year’s game, as the only automaker to not prerelease its ad. The Detroit automaker is using the Super Bowl to launch its Cadillac F1 team, including revealing the look of its first livery car to a national audience.

The automaker last month showed a design prototype of the vehicle in Detroit, including at the city’s auto show, but it has not released any information about the commercial.

Toyota, which is the official automotive partner of the NFL, is expected to air two 30-second ads focused on family connections.

One called “Superhero Belt,” shows a grandson and grandfather switching roles throughout the years and telling the other to secure their seatbelts. The other has not been released.

Volkswagen’s ad resurrects the automaker’s well-known 1990s ad campaign for a new generation of customers in a marketing drive called “The Great Invitation: Drivers Wanted.”

The new campaign, including a 30-second Super Bowl spot, features many of the automaker’s vehicles being driven around to House of Pain’s 1992 hit “Jump Around.”

— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report.

Disclosure: CNBC parent Versant is carrying NBC Sports-produced Olympic coverage on its networks, including USA Network and CNBC.

American Airlines‘ promised turnaround is off to a rocky start this year.

Pilot and flight attendant unions have called CEO Robert Isom’s leadership into question as the airline’s performance has trailed its rivals by a wide margin, a trend that has translated to lower profit-sharing for American’s more than 130,000 employees. Adding to employee frustration, the airline struggled to recover from major winter storms in recent weeks and crews were left stranded — some without a place to sleep beside the airport.

Late Friday, the pilots’ union wrote to the airline’s board, seeking a meeting to discuss the carrier’s financial and operational challenges.

“Our airline is on an underperforming path and has failed to define an identity or a strategy to correct course,” the board of directors of the Allied Pilots Association wrote. The union called for “leaders who are willing, equipped, and empowered to get the house in order.”

American made $111 million last year, an amount eclipsed by profits from Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, which brought in $5 billion and more than $3.3 billion, respectively, even though American flew similar capacity in 2025.

“I know that it is a meager profit-sharing, a very small profit-sharing pool this year. Again, when you break even, that’s the kind of profit-sharing you have,” Isom told employees after releasing earnings results on Jan. 27, according to a recording of the event that was reviewed by CNBC. “I’m disappointed in that.”

American is trying to catch up to rivals with premium products that bring in higher fares, a bright spot in the industry as coach cabin revenue growth has been elusive. It has also worked to reverse the damage from a failed direct-to-traveler business-travel strategy, whose architect American ousted in May 2024.

2026 is crucial for the carrier.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline issued an upbeat outlook for the year on Jan. 27, and Isom told crews that he was optimistic about improvement this year. He also noted that many staff, like flight attendants, make more than their counterparts at United, where cabin crews and other employees are in contract negotiations.

Isom is leading what he has pitched as a major transformation of American. The strategy includes improving customer service, the network and revenue management.

This week, he took his message to about 6,000 leaders at a conference the airline held at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.

“We’ve had conversations as a senior leadership team about how we can’t pass up any opportunity … how we need to hold ourselves accountable,” Isom said at the event, according to a transcript which was seen by CNBC. “It starts with us at the top, but it’s all of us here today and how you lead your teams. 2026 can’t just feel different. It has to be different.”

American issued its 2026 outlook as it was juggling the aftermath of a late January winter storm that walloped much of the U.S. with snow, ice and sleet and preparing for another storm that ended up hitting its major hub of Charlotte, North Carolina, while competitors dug out faster.

The financial results, coupled with the slow storm recovery, drew anger from both pilot and flight attendant union leaders, which together represent about 40,000 crew members.

This week, two American Airlines flight operations leaders met with the union and discussed recent problems, with the union telling members that “our pilots will not accept platitudes, empty words, and the absence of decisive action any longer.” 

Association of Professional Flight Attendants President Julie Hedrick said on Jan. 27 that Isom, who became CEO in 2022, “is missing the human factor” and that “many of us have been here for a very long time, and we don’t see an ending that puts us in a better place.”

Isom acknowledged the trouble American’s crew members faced during the late January storm that paralyzed a large swath of the United States and called the weather “probably the most impactful” during his decades-long tenure at the airline.

American had an especially difficult 2025, which started with the collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter into one of the carrier’s regional jets that was arriving at Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing all 67 people on both flights. The airline, and its rivals, were also hit by the U.S. government shutdown late last year.

“We’re off to a fast start based on the booking trends we’ve observed in January, all-time records for the first three weeks of the year,” Isom told analysts on the Jan. 27 earnings call.

But investors also want to the airline to prove its progress.

American’s stock is roughly flat this year. Its competitor 20 miles away in Dallas, Southwest Airlines, is also trying to remake itself, and its stock is up more than 30% in 2026. Shares of United and Delta are up more than 3% and more than 8%, respectively, for the year.

Southwest’s forecast that it could quadruple earnings this year has had investors in a bullish frenzy. That carrier recently sealed its biggest transformation in its nearly 55 years of flying (to some travelers’ chagrin): assigning seats last month for the first time, adding its first-ever bag fees, and rolling out basic economy tickets and other changes. Investors’ confidence boosted Southwest’s stock to a nearly four-year high last month after it reported results.

All U.S. carriers are investing heavily in higher-end travel over standard coach, and even Southwest is considering opening its first airport lounge, its CEO told CNBC last year.

American likewise is revamping its wide-body planes with larger, single business-class cabins, putting in a three-class cabin on new Airbus narrow-bodies and expanding its airport lounges. The airline has also refreshed its food and beverage options, including offering Lavazza coffee and Champagne Bollinger. For its 100th anniversary this spring, it’s also adding caviar and beef Wellington for long-haul premium cabins.

Isom has said he expects half of American’s revenue to come from “premium offerings” toward the end of the decade.

One major battle for American is at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where United CEO Scott Kirby, whom American fired in 2016, has vowed to keep his old employer at bay.

Both carriers are ramping up their schedules there next summer. Deutsche Bank estimated in a note Monday that United generates about $10 billion in revenue at O’Hare and that American generates more than $5 billion.

Around the time American reported earnings, United posted a digital billboard in Chicago that read “More on time, less canceled flights. Aadvantage, United,” using the same spelling as American’s AAdvantage loyalty program. Bankrupt Spirit Airlines is also seeking to transfer two gates at Chicago O’Hare to United for $30 million, which would give United more ground at the airport.

But from Chicago to Charlotte, questions still remain for American.

“It’s unclear if the current strategy will close the margin gap to its peers,” Melius Research airline analyst Conor Cunningham said about American. “It will take a lot of time to execute. You can’t just turn premium revenue on.”

Cunningham added, “It took Delta over a decade to cultivate a premium image,” pointing to the U.S. profit leaders’ transformation.