Sports were a key driver of reach for four of the top five luxury auto commercials, as ranked by iSpot’s national TV ad impressions for May 19-25. Audi’s fifth-place spot was the outlier, primarily targeting various news programs and late-night talk shows.
In its first-place spot from Genesis, lightbulbs with legs crawl all over a 2026 GV70 before the vehicle zooms off, with the narrator remarking that “you can leave old ideas behind.” PGA Tour golf was the top programming, accounting for 10.5% of the commercial’s total 127.9 million national TV ad impressions — but reality TV was another focus, with the genre as a whole generating nearly a third of total impressions. Per iSpot’s Creative Assessment, 41% of surveyed viewers said the visual scenes were the “single best thing” about the ad.
With 95.7 million national TV ad impressions, Mercedes-Benz takes second place with a spot promoting the Dream Days sales event, during which deals are available on models including the CLE Coupe. College baseball games accounted for 29.2% of total impressions, followed by My Lottery Dream Home (5.4%) and 100 Day Dream Home (3.6%). According to iSpot’s Creative Assessment, this spot had an 86% brand match (the percentage of survey respondents who remembered it was a Mercedes-Benz ad after watching it), above the recent automaker industry norm of 80%.
The sales promotions continue with the No.3 spot from Infiniti, advertising its Once in a Springtime event with special offers for the 2025 QX80. It received 92.4 million national TV ad impressions, with reach led by NHL games (8% of total impressions), Shark Tank (4.1%) and NBA Countdown (3.7%). On the network side of things, HGTV and ESPN were neck and neck, generating 10.4% and 10.2% of total impressions, respectively.
Buick went big on sports for its fourth-place spot (89.6 million national TV ad impressions). In addition to the NBA — which generated a full quarter of total impressions — the spot aired during college softball (4.5% of impressions), NBA Tip-Off (3.8%), MLB games (3.1%) and NHL games (2.9%), plus various other sports-related programming. That being said, CNN was the top network by overall reach, accounting for 21% of the spot’s total impressions.
Audi rounds out the ranking with an upbeat spot for the Q5 featuring music by Jet. It had 82.6 million national TV ad impressions, with top programming including Face the Nation (5.3% of total impressions), The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (4.1%) and CBS News Sunday Morning (4.1%).
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Impressions: 127,892,736
Interruption Rate: 2.24%
Attention Index: 80
Est. National TV Ad Spend: $965,171
Impressions: 95,703,346
Interruption Rate: 3.78%
Attention Index: 95
Est. National TV Ad Spend: $940,249
3. Infiniti: Cleared for Takeoff
Impressions: 92,417,821
Interruption Rate: 1.74%
Attention Index: 93
Est. National TV Ad Spend: $513,254
Impressions: 89,648,546
Interruption Rate: 1.93%
Attention Index: 89
Est. National TV Ad Spend: $1,311,606
5. Audi: Our Best, Made Better
Impressions: 82,616,646
Interruption Rate: 4.45%
Attention Index: 90
Est. National TV Ad Spend: $834,695
Data provided by iSpot, The New Standard for TV Ad Measurement.
Chart positions and other data may be updated in iSpot’s database as additional airings information becomes available.
TV Impressions - Total TV ad impressions delivered for the brand or spot.
Interruption Rate - The percentage of devices that were present at the beginning of the ad but did not complete watching the ad. Actions that interrupt ad play include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV. The Interruption Rate is measured on a scale of 0 to 100%.
Attention Index - A comparison of the ad’s interruption rate against its specific media placement. The Attention Index is measured on a scale of 0 to 200, where 100 is the average and means the ad is performing as expected.
Est. National TV Spend - Amount spent on TV airings for the brand’s spots.
