Auto Advertising Slows While Pharma Faces a Major Shift

This week, Kelly and Sean take a category-focused approach, diving into two major sectors shaping the advertising market: automotive and pharmaceutical advertising.

The episode begins with a conversation around Sean’s recent car purchase, which quickly opens into a broader discussion about the state of the auto industry. They examine how automotive advertising—historically one of the largest categories in media—is now facing slower growth, changing consumer priorities, rising vehicle costs, and uncertainty around electric vehicle adoption.

The discussion highlights:

• Why automotive ad spend is dropping below historic benchmarks
• The evolving role of EV advertising
• Why affordability may matter more than technology upgrades
• How companies like Slate Auto and BYD could reshape consumer demand
• Why legacy automakers are reducing spend
• Kelly and Sean then shift into pharmaceutical advertising, a category that remains heavily concentrated in the United States. They discuss the unique nature of direct-to-consumer pharma ads, the rise of GLP-1 marketing, and the major patent expirations expected to reshape spending patterns across the category.

Additional topics include:

• Why TV pharma spending is declining
• The growth of digital pharma campaigns
• The impact of blockbuster GLP-1 drugs
• What “patent cliffs” mean for advertising budgets
• Emerging wellness and alternative health advertising trends
• The episode closes with reflections on consumer behavior, category evolution, and what these shifts could mean for advertisers moving into 2027.

Key Topics Covered

• Automotive advertising trends in 2026
• Why auto ad spend is declining globally
• Electric vehicle adoption and marketing challenges
• BYD and Slate Auto disruption potential
• Pharma advertising trends in the US
• GLP-1 advertising growth
• Patent expirations and pharma spend pressure
• Digital vs traditional pharma advertising
• Emerging wellness advertising trends

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to press@guideline.ai.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So with Eevee, right, you would expect, okay, this is the growth industry, this is where things are going. But kind of to that Tesla example, we're just not seeing it, right? I think part of it comes down to cost, right? There's a sticker price challenge. There's a lot of like structural challenges that the Eeve thing and Eevee growth isn't necessarily solving for because the declines are so much sharper than even the modest increases we are seeing in Eevee.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah, there's a high price tag associated with something that you know there's a lot of folks out there who are looking just to get from point A to point B. You're listening to Media Monitor, where we break down what's happening in the media and the advertising industry and tell you what it actually means.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Kelly, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Sean, I am excellent. Always happy to see you. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

I am peachy.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Peachy.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Peachy. Are you ready? Because we are gonna do something different today. I am gonna lead the cold open into whatever we talk about. It's gonna be weird. It's gonna be weird. We're all gonna try it out. But I think what's relevant is I I, my family, recently bought a new car. Now, I think we've talked about this prior. We're the type of people that hold on to our cars for like 20 plus years, if if we can hold on to that long, but like there isn't a single vehicle in our fleet that was at least before this new car under uh 17 years old. So this was a big decision for us.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

I have a clarifying question. So when you say you bought a new car, was it in fact brand new or is it new to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Certified pre-owned.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I had a feeling.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yes. So new, new to us, but I will say it is the newest car my wife and I have ever owned. It was a we bought it in 2026. It was a 2025 that had come off lease and we bought it certified pre-owned. So it was a big deal for us. This is this is the we went from physically having to connect your phone into a little dongle to play Bluetooth in the car to just connecting like magic.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

The technology, the technology. There are screens in this car. We were we mentally prepared for it. We've we've gotten rental cars, but man, what what a difference. Although I will tell you, again, being the old school guy that I am, I like the knobs. I don't want to like navigate through 16 different touch screens. And this particular car has maps in multiple places, which I'm not prepared for.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

I kind of imagine like when you walk through, like when you're preparing to leave the house and you pick up your keys, there's a lot on that keychain. And when you walk around, you can hear the keys jingling.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

When we bought our house, I'm not exaggerating to you, they handed me a old school skeleton key that had like the notches in just one of those like straight lines, like something you'd see from a Scooby-Doo mystery. That was the key to our house. That was the only key to our house. They were like, here you go, unlock your house now. So yeah. You have you have a very good vision of what my keychain looks like. Although signific I have tried to be better. I've cut it down. There's only like a few extra keys, but it was at one point I looked like a janitor. It was embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

I just knew it because I, you know, this is one of those like where it's the outer layer of the Venn diagram where it's like, I don't think we have any physical keys. We're like fob entry.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

What? No. Yes. Never. Never. No, nope.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I'm gonna br I'm gonna bring you over someday.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Nope. Nope. That terrifies me.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Well, I I love you telling us about this recent addition to your fleet because it's a great intro for today's one of today's topics. We're gonna do some category deep dives today. And I think it's worth mentioning before we get into it that we have, as everyone knows, a ton of data. We actually cover data across a hundred plus different categories or industries as some might refer to them. And today we're gonna drill into two of them: autos and pharma. So love to hear from you, Sean, particularly since cars are top of mind. What has been going on in the auto industry from an ad perspective?

unknown 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Talk to me about what kind of talked about trends, talked about regions. Take it away.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah. So I think when you think of auto, right, there's there's this almost kind of intrinsic love of autos and ads, right? Like advertising was built for like the automobile, or maybe, yeah, advertising was in many ways built for the automotive industry, right? Maybe to a lesser extent travel, but like if you think back kind of decades globally, right? The the cars were kind of what made the modern era of like advertising, or what it is, roughly speaking. So it's this kind of staple of advertising. But in many ways, it's kind of fallen down on hard times, both in terms of what we see in our data. I think there's kind of global trends, but also kind of pockets of interesting growth that are challenging kind of the way we we think about the auto industry. Uh so to start, right? I think kind of to your point on the coverage of categories, while we can't get into individual brands, right? Like that's not allowed within our data, we can get pretty deep. You know, one of our product subcategories that we can look at are luxury autos or electric vehicles, or we could look at kind of overall automakers, right? There's a lot of different ways you can slice this and dice it to understand, like make, model, all of those things. But collectively, the thing that I would start with was kind of automotive has always been more than, you know, anywhere from like 10 to 12% of all category spend, um, you know, going back to like 2015. Our forecast for this year pegs that by the end of the year, auto will have fallen below 10% for the first time ever in terms of what we can measure in our data.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah. A big shift for them in terms of just not spending a ton on advertising. Um, if you look at 2025 overall, you know, the entire category basically uh kind of contracted by uh let's call it roughly um what's it probably seven percent um kind of collectively. And Q1 is is basically um also down at roughly the same amount. I think it was down around five, um, as these automakers just keep pulling back spend. But it's it's it's different, right? Um BYD in many ways kind of going off of organic, but some advertising is continuing to expand, grow, etc. Whereas all of the Detroit automakers are kind of facing a lot of structural headwinds. And so that's where we're seeing a lot of the cuts collectively coming from from an ad spend perspective. And so there's these like lopsided pockets where you have kind of the old kind of older brands that are more kind of established institutions are clawing back ad spend. Then you have the famous example of like Tesla that just refuses to spend on advertising, right? So that's like, and they're facing their own challenges as well from a from a headwinds perspective. But like the new kind of go to market doesn't include these huge splashy ad campaigns, quite like a lot of the established brands had kind of always traditionally gone to market for the better part of 70 years. So I think that that's part of what we're seeing in the data, um, just in terms of of some of the contractions. Um but it's interesting, right? It's it's from a pacing perspective. Q1's down last year in the US alone, they were down like four and a half percent. So it's it's this kind of big change to advertising when we think about what used to be the mainstay, which was automotive.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, and I mean I imagine, and this has changed over the past kind of 10 years, but you know, Super Bowls in Q1, there's other big sporting events in Q1, it's a great place for advertising to happen. So when Q1 falls, it's not good. But you know, dipping below that 10% marker is a big shift. Are you seeing, you know, kind of at that subcategory level anything you'd like to call out? Um, you know, we talked about luxury vehicles, EVs, like is it is there anything there, any dynamics that are worth touting?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah, like the one that I would hire would be EV, for example. So with EV, right, you would expect, okay, this is the growth industry, this is where things are going. But kind of to that Tesla example, we're just not seeing it, right? And a lot of the US automakers, to a lesser extent, so the European ones, aren't really promoting heavily the EV kind of lines or are wholesale, like cutting them back, transitioning, kind of moving to different product lines. And so kind of collectively, I think the thing that was going to be the turnaround in terms of of driving probably a lot of ad spend was the electric kind of vehicle revolution. And that just hasn't come to fruition. You know, it's it's largely plateaued in the United States. Um, Europe kind of continues to grow, but it's in pockets, you know, individual countries, incredible growth, but kind of others are different. And I think part of it comes down to cost, right? There's there's a sticker price challenge, which is why I think the BYD example is an interesting one. You know, Canada is recently kind of wrestling with now allowing BYD to come in after a kind of a slate of tariff-related issues. But like on that topic, probably the automotive tariff specific to the Canadian market probably wiped around 20 million Canadian dollars out of advertising just on that kind of one particular market headwind last year. So there's a lot of like structural challenges that um on a kind of collective level, right, the EV thing and EV growth isn't necessarily solving for because the declines are so much sharper than even the modest increases we are seeing in EV.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, and I mean I think as EVs, you know, continue to come out, they're pretty tech heavy. They're you know, there's a high price tag association, maybe. Yeah, there's a high price tag associated with something that you know there's a lot of folks out there who are looking just to get from point A to point B. They don't need all these bells and whistles. So, you know, I think you you and I were talking about this earlier um in the week that there's a need for just like the no-frills vehicle. And uh, you know, I think you brought up the Amazon slate truck. Yeah. Right? And I'll have you know, I went and built one, customized one. It's pretty fun.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, all of those I've again, I've never bought a new car, but it's always fun to be like, yes, I want this trim. Ooh, yes, I want some fancy alloy rims. Ooh, I would love a new brake package. You're like, sure, whatever. And you get to build your own car and somehow it's like 3x what the what the base MSRP is. You're like, oh, this is why people don't do it very often.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Well, the funniest thing that I found when I did it was there was a BYO speaker option. You could bring essentially like a jam box and plug it in and avoid having any sort of radio or speaker system at all.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah. No, I'm I'm watching the slate c slate closely, right? Because it it mimics a lot of BYD, right? It's these like cheap EVs. My personal opinion is that there isn't necessarily a anti-EV sentiment. It's that, you know, EVs collectively are, you know, let's call it like 15, 20% higher than combustion engine, you know, equivalents from a vehicle perspective. They're heavier. There's not all that many places to charge. And so for folks that are like on the fence, you're like, ah, well, like literally it's just cheaper to me to keep buying a gas engine car. I'm gonna do it, especially when MSRPs have risen as high as they have. So to kind of introduce and say, like, okay, what if we got rid of the price point consideration, right? Slate, I think, is gonna retail for under 20,000. It ships in one color, gray. You have to customize it if you want something else, which is like fantastic. And so, kind of the same vibe is like it could tell us pretty quick is the demand there and people want new cars, but it's just simply the price points have gotten so ludicrously high that it's just like it's out of the realm of possibility for most people. Or is it something about electric that's kind of less enticing? My hunch is that's the price point.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Well, the feature that I'm gonna be watching, and if there's data on this, please someone send it to me. Doors are also optional. You have to, you have you have to say you want them.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

So uh To be clear, that is that is one to me that feels not uh an option. Like I feel like I have to have doors. Argo nets don't do it for me as a as a dad with kids.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah, I I think, you know, unless I'm gonna move down to San Diego and just be cruising on the beach, like I think I need the doors. So yeah. So yeah, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes. I think it's an you know, an answer to a problem. And we can keep our data tracking it. So we'll report back on that one. Any other auto tidbits before we move?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

No, no, I just I just think um, you know, tied to some of the economic stuff that we've been kind of watching around the Strait of Hermuz, oil prices, all of that, right? It's it's also just something I think interesting to kind of continue to watch as we kind of think through some some implications of long-term effects and whether or not that dampens oil prices. My attitude is like, like, yeah, in the short term, but it it feels like despite people talking about when gas goes up, you know, auto sales go down. That's true, but it feels very cyclical. So like that's one that I am watching, but like I don't think this is going to be the watershed moment that people kind of go over to Eevee.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

So well, let's talk about another big category. And um, it was you know, good reminder for me, because you know, living in the states, sometimes I forget this. Our our data covers many countries globally. Like we've got Canada, Great Britain, China, Australia, New Zealand, US. But this category is one that really needs to center in US. It's pharma. Other places around the world do not see the sheer volume of ads that we do. And it's it's something you forget if you live in the United States, but would love to kind of pick your brain on the trends within that space because it is a huge part of advertising in the US.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

For sure. Yeah, and I think I think the pharma piece is particularly interesting because to your point on it being huge in the US, is like it's completely bananas for anyone else, except maybe New Zealand, where there are some some kind of parity and from a direct consumer perspective. So I think maybe to take a level set, right? The pharmaceutical ads and companies can kind of advertise globally in very specific ways. It is unique to the United States that pharma can do direct consumer and say, hey, here's a new pill. Talk to your doctor about it, about maybe you should also get this pill or, oh, you have this disease condition. You should probably, you know, think about actually trying to get this very specific pill with this name brand. That is something wholly and uniquely kind of American in terms of the global advertising market. So I did want to clarify to say it's not that like, you know, bear can't talk about them as bear globally. It's just that they can't do it in the same way that they can here, which I think is, you know, particularly interesting, right? That came in the the late 80s. So uh, you know, starting there, I think what is interesting is when you look at pharma for 2026, we are kind of forecasting it to be a meh kind of year for pharma, you know, basically flat, maybe up a percent. And part of that is coming into this year, we saw a lot of trends where pharma was continued to cut ad spend, kind of Q or 2025 basically ended up just a hair under 1% uh up for a category that had historically been growing in like the four to seven percent range. And I'll that may take people by surprise, because if anybody is in the US, all you see is GLP one ads, right? Like takeozembic, you do all these things, Wagovi. But at the same time that that's happening, is there are over 20 major drugs that are coming off patent this year. So it's interesting in terms of where we're seeing some of the GLP one growth is really kind of on digital, right? It's still keeping there, is where we're seeing like seven, eight percent growth uh this last year, and then Q126 in terms of pharma, whereas television is starting to recede in a big way. That had historically been the largest category, you know, and we saw major contractions last year, uh, down almost 10% for the category, which had historically been kind of the biggest. And so GLP ones also seem to be a moving strategy where they're going more digitally oriented. I think part of it is also that it's more mass market, it's reaching kind of a much wider range of demographics. Like television used to play really well because it was a fairly older audience, you could kind of message perfectly. Um, so we're starting to see this big kind of shift within the pharmaceutical industry. And it's another one that I'm watching closely, just because, again, their sheer mass from an ad spend perspective in the US kind of makes or breaks the growth of the market, particularly on television. And right now, it just feels like, in terms of our forecast, is is almost flat for the year because of the wash coming off of those, you know, drugs coming off patent, even with the explosion of GLP ones.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Wow. I mean, it all it all makes sense. It's just an interesting intersection of the of all of those things happening at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah. So it really is like a lot of different things happen. Usually it's like, okay, there's a few that come on board from a drug perspective, there's a few that come off patent. So it's like every single year, it's not really one or the other. And you usually have like one big blockbuster drug and a few smaller ones. But this is like massive kind of patent cliff, as I've kind of heard it referred to, and then like a singular big drug, GLP one, back in market, both in the shot and pill form.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

So outlook for 2026 on the pharma category, you're anticipating kind of uh similar to 2025?

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Yeah, basically like one one-ish percent, which again historically is much un it's significantly underperforming where the pharma category had been for prior the last like five or six years. Uh but yeah, kind of like in that ballpark of one-ish percent growth.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

So with declines in across both of these, it'll be interesting to see who kind of shows up and takes those spots. Some people have to keep tabs on.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Absolutely. My hunch, my my original guess was given some of the changes that we're seeing across the FDA, etc., is is like pieces of the wellness category. Some more like fringy type, like where you can kind of slot it and say, like, this is an alternative way to cure X or solve for Y. That is my pseudo like lukewarm take, that that's that's where you'll see some of that advertising increase is coming from.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

I have to confess, I got this is not a prescription, but I got I I finally caved and I bought a uh lymphatic drainage brush for my face. Brush?

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah, it's like you okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

You just kind of on your face. For those who aren't watching video, and you should, uh I'm I'm gently brushing upward against my jawline. And you know, it does. It's making me feel youthful.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I was about to say, like, what does it do? So youthful. It helps you with like an anti-aging thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I think it's supposed to do that. I don't know. I didn't even literally I literally did not read about this. I was just getting served so many ads and seeing look at look at this side of my face and how horrible this side of my face looks. So I'm all about this alternative wellness. Let's do it. Bring it on.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I forget who the comedian is, but I'm I am a subscriber of you can either look old or you can look weird. And so I'm just defaulting to eventually just looking old.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

I think that that's a fair assessment.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, I loved it. I was like, that's it, that is a very succinct way to put it. Although I will say I've looked at some folks who are kind of older, like a George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and like it's unfair. Like they don't, I don't, I don't think it's it's fair to characterize them in the same bucket as like an average person who's 60. It's just and again, I know that it's a combination of diet, money, very good kind of cosmetic routine, surgery, all of these things, but I will take it back and say there is a third category that if you have a lot of things at your disposal, you can actually not look old or weird. You can actually just look forever youthful, but that's a very slim number of people in this world.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I hope I I fall somewhere in like not, I mean, it's probably gonna be weird, but hopefully good. And I think this is we started the episode talking about where we fall outside of the Venn diagram overlap. Fob, key, skeleton key.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, looking old. It fits though. Yeah, it's just looking, yeah, look, looking old. That's that's that's where I've gotta go with this. Once my hairline started to recede, I was like, yep, this is it now. So here we are.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Here we are. And here we are. And I love it, Sean. Every week, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for taking us into those categories. And for anyone who wants to hear more about a specific category, drop us a line. Let us know if there's something you want us to delve into. We'll see if we can do it and we'll make time for it on a future podcast.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

I think that's a great plug. I think that's where we leave it. Kelly, it was a great pleasure as always.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Same. See you later, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Have a good one. That's Media Monitor. Follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts every Wednesday for a new episode. And as always, thanks for listening.