Close-up of car mirror objects are closer than they appear

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Ford and General Motors used to be mainstays of Super Bowl ads, but no more

Amidst fierce competition in EVs, automakers have hit the brakes on Big Game ads, with Stellantis the only one in this year’s lineup.

Hyunsoo Rim

2/13/25 9:11AM

While the on-field analysis of Super Bowl LIX has broadly wrapped up after the blowout Eagles victory on Sunday, the advertising industry has been busy dissecting the winners and losers of the Super Bowl ads, some of which cost more than $8 million for a 30-second slot.

Yet among the ~60 advertisers vying for the attention of the 128 million average viewers, a once dominant player was largely absent: car brands. This year, only one showed up: Jeep, with a two-minute cinematic ad starring Harrison Ford behind the wheel of a Wrangler.

The four carmakers that ran commercials last year (Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, and Kia) pulled back altogether.

This retreat isn’t new — automakers’ share of Super Bowl ad screen time has been shrinking for years, according to TV ad measurement firm iSpot.tv. After roaring back postrecession, carmakers like Ford poured record sums into Super Bowl ads in 2011 and 2012, producing some of the most iconic commercials in history and commanding ~40% of all Super Bowl ad time. Last year, that share had dwindled to 8%, and this year it dropped even further, to just 7%.

Why are car companies sitting out?

While Jeep’s parent company, Stellantis, had little choice but to advertise, amid a leadership shake-up and lagging US sales, most automakers no longer see the steep price tag as worth it, especially with growing challenges across the industry. For one, the EV boom is slowing, with President Trump pushing to remove tax credits — a move that could further dampen already sluggish demand and force automakers to rethink aggressive EV marketing. Indeed, the share of Super Bowl car ads featuring EVs (measured by run time) dropped last year for the first time since 2016, per iSpot.tv.

Shifting Gears

As these pressures mount and tariffs loom on auto imports from China, Canada, and Mexico — the largest auto parts exporter to the US — automakers may continue to steer away from costly TV ads, where the Super Bowl remains one of the last strongholds. According to eMarketer, TV ad spending for the auto industry dropped 8.6% year over year in 2024, and is projected to keep falling through 2026.

Instead, car brands are turning to digital ads, a cheaper and more effective alternative in today’s streaming- and social-media-dominated era. In 2021, the auto industry spent more on digital ads than traditional media for the first time — a gap that’s expected to widen to 60% digital by 2027, according to market research firm BIA.

Note: A previous version of this article used a forecast for the 2025 figure. This has now been updated with the actual figure.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”