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Hyundai Nabs 5 Super Bowl Slots; CBS Sells 80% of Big Game

As auto advertising begins to improve after a year of decimation - total auto advertising across all media segments will increase 4.1% next year, according to Borrell Associates - Hyundai is ramping up for its biggest U.S. campaign ever.

Hyundai’s campaign, for the redesigned Sonata and for the Tucson, will include five spots during the February, 2010, CBS airing of the Super Bowl - two during the game itself and three during pre-game. It will also include ads during the Academy Awards, writes MediaPost.

“We loved what we got from last year’s Super Bowl numbers - they were off the charts,” says Joel Ewanick, Hyundai Motor America’s vp of marketing.

The campaign will highlight its corporate social responsibility actions such as Hope on Wheels, a pediatric cancer program initiative driven by dealers.

Cars.com is another in the auto segment which recently re-upped its Super Bowl appearance. Cars.com will return for the third year in a row, the company said today (via The New York Times).

CBS may have thought it was getting the short end of the stick, having come up for its Super Bowl rotation following a year of recession. But marketers including Anheuser-Busch, Bridgestone, CareerBuilder, Coca-Cola, GoDaddy, Monster and the Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola units of PepsiCo. are still signing up to sponsor the big game.

About 80% of CBS’s ad inventory has been sold so far, with :30 spots going for between $2.5 million to $3 million, according to the Aim Group.

2009 was marked by a precipitous drop in auto advertising, which fell 31% in the first half of the year.