If the last game you watched seemed light on truck ads, you didn't imagine it. Patrick Coffee reports in Wednesday's Journal that carmakers are buying far fewer spots on regular TV. Week one of this NFL season carried 107 car and truck commercials across 15 national games. Three years ago it was 158 across 16 games.
The Super Bowl tells the same story. The last one ran just four national car ads. Ten years ago, carmakers were good for 10 or more. Guideline, a research firm that reads ad agency invoices, expects auto to fall under 10% of U.S. ad spending this year. It has never been that low. Ten years ago the share was 13%. Other advertisers took the slots. Sean Wright of Guideline said advertising keeps growing, and “plenty of brands and categories have happily filled the space left by carmakers.”
The pressure is money. Gina Reduto of NBCUniversal points to tariffs, interest rates and pricier gas. She said carmakers now question every ad budget harder than they used to. “Auto is not immune to everything that we're seeing in the marketplace.” Every ad dollar now has to prove its worth.
The deal moved closer to home
The money didn't vanish. It moved. In the second quarter of 2025, for the first time, carmakers spent more on streaming than on regular TV, iSpot says. Streaming has led in most quarters since. Honda (HMC) says it isn't forcing that shift. “It's just following where we know the eyeballs are,” said Megan Amic, who runs digital marketing for American Honda. The bigger change is what the ads say. Big brands have pulled back from national image campaigns. They now spend on regional sales-event ads, often made with local dealer groups. Those ads were 20% of automakers' regular-TV dollars in 2023, the kind the industry calls linear. This year through August they're nearly 40%. Streaming lets a brand aim at one region or one kind of buyer, and turn the spending up or down by results.
Our read
This is cash flow (Cash Flow · M5), and it's a car-shopping story in disguise. Carmakers are squeezed by tariffs, higher interest rates and pricier gas. That's the same squeeze a buyer feels at the dealer. The national ad that sold a feeling is fading. The ad that's left has a sales event, a region and a date. That's useful. The deal is now local, dealer-driven and timed. The sticker in your area may not match the one your cousin saw across the country. Shop the event, and shop the loan separately. The rate matters more than the ad ever did.
The concrete thing is your next car, whenever it comes. This week, look at the car you drive and write down two numbers. The loan rate you'd pay today, and the month you think you'll replace it. If that month is within a year, start the loan shopping now, at your bank or credit union, before any sales event starts the clock. The umbrella is cheaper when it isn't raining. We're glad to look at the numbers with you.