August Automotive TV Ad Spend Climbs 15% YoY

Automakers made a big end-of-summer push, spending an estimated $113.3 million on national TV ads, according to iSpot data recently shared with MediaPost. That's a 15.3% increase from industry spend in August 2022. National TV ad impressions were up as well: Automotive ads racked up 28.6 billion impressions, a 16% increase from August 2022.

• Ram Trucks was the top-spending auto brand, shelling out an estimated $12.5 million in August. Subaru ($10.5 million), Chevrolet ($8.8 million), Kia ($8.1 million) and Jeep ($8 million) round out the top five.
• Mazda led for biggest estimated spend increase among the top 15 brands by spend, with an outlay 48x more this August compared to last August. Much of that is due to a heavier focus on NFL, which accounted for 90% of the automaker's spend (Mazda did not advertise during NFL in August 2022).
• The top programs for automakers by share of household TV ad impressions in August 2023 were NFL (1.99%), MLB (0.72%), House Hunters (0.61%), Today (0.58%) and SportsCenter (0.54%).

Get more insights around August's automotive TV advertising here.