Business
Automakers mainly skip 2026 Super Bowl advertising
Volkswagen is one of three automakers expected to advertise during the Super Bowl in 2026.
Courtesy VW
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.
Autos out
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.”
2026 ads
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.
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Though the league’s championship game has often been associated with older men, major companies are using the game to reach out to both Gen Z and female viewers with their latest advertisements.
“[I]f we had made something that didn’t speak to Gen Z or didn’t appeal to women, I think we would have been missing the mark,” Laura Jones, chief marketing officer of Instacart, told Variety on Wednesday.
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Ads ahead of the Super Bowl are hoping to reach broader audiences. (Kirby Lee-Imagn Images via Reuters / Reuters)
Super Bowl ratings reached record levels in 2025 with approximately 127.7 million people tuning in to the game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs.
This broke the previous record set one year prior in 2024 at about 123.4 million viewers.
With more viewers than ever before expected to watch the Big Game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, major companies are hoping to appeal to the widest audience possible, which includes a growing female demographic.
“We are seeing female viewership in sports hold or continue to rise,” Mars Snacking senior director Diane Sayler told Variety. “And I do think that networks and leagues are getting better at telling the story of the players and telling more than just the story on the field. And I actually believe that is what is driving a lot more female interest in this space.”
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2025’s Super Bowl had a record number of viewers with even more expected in 2026. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images / Getty Images)
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“Most marketing today is very targeted. You have to deliver a specific message to specific audiences,” Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, told Variety. “With the Super Bowl, that’s not the case, because you’ve got a huge range of differences. And the Super Bowl is so expensive you really don’t want to miss out on a significant portion of the audience.”
Media Research Center video host Justine Brooke Murray told Fox News Digital that the new marketing strategy was “spot on” but urged companies to instead focus on avoiding divisive politics.
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Super Bowl LX will air on Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in California. (Kirby Lee-Imagn Images via Reuters / Reuters)
“We want to be entertained, not sold a weird version of body positivity that includes ads flashing sweaty armpits across the screen as we reach for another nacho,” Murray said. “Those of us who grew up in the 2000s, zoomers, would love to see a return to ads that sold us things we actually like: chips, and cookies – not a political agenda.”
She added, “Large corporations have already learned their lesson, that appealing to the gender-bending 0.0001% of our population with men wearing bikinis is inclusive to almost nobody. Just be funny and keep politics out of it!”
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Super Bowl LX will be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
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