Julia Faria
Research lead covering advertising and marketing
U.S. automotive advertising - statistics & facts
In the 2022 ranking of the top automobile manufacturers by advertising spending in the United States, General Motors, a Detroit-based company known for several brands such as Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Buick, ranked first. General Motors’ advertising spending in the United States amounted to 3.25 billion U.S. dollars that year, up from 2.7 billion in the previous year. Also based in the Detroit area, Ford Motor Company was the fourth largest advertiser in the country. Regarding ad investments per vehicle sold, Polestar, an electric car bar founded by Volvo Cars and Geely Holding in 2017, took the lead. Over four thousand dollars were spent on advertising per Polestar sold in the U.S. in 2022. In contrast, Tesla kept its ad spend at zero dollars. The brand, which for long time deemed advertising unnecessary, started dipping its toes into Google ads in 2023.
Carmakers are among the largest U.S. ad spenders
Automotive advertising spending in the U.S. was forecast to increase 7.7 percent in 2023 to reach some 20.8 billion dollars. One year earlier, the industry was among the top five leading categories in measured-media spend in the country. Carmakers are some of the major spenders in the American ad market, but they are not the only ones within the auto industry. For instance, car dealerships invested nearly 8.6 billion dollars in advertising as of 2022. Second biggest advertising medium in the United States, TV remains an important platform for automobile advertisers. Nissan, Buick, and GMC are some of the main names within the industry that have invested in TV advertising in 2023.Digital advertising among carmakers
Despite the importance of TV in the advertising industry in the U.S., the medium has been losing space in the ad market to digital platforms. In line with this trend, auto advertisers have also shifted their investments to digital platforms. The automobile industry accounted for 5.3 percent of digital advertising revenue in the country in 2022. A year before, online display ads for autos reached around 1.6 billion U.S. dollars, an over 135 percent growth compared to 2020. Among car dealerships, digital advertising makes up a share of over 65 percent of the total. For those stakeholders, streaming audio ads were considered the format with the highest return-on-investment (ROI).
