The auto industry’s $100 million bet on winning the Super Bowl

As you settle into watch Super Bowl XLVIII, we hope you enjoy some football with your car commercials.

This year's game will feature roughly 12 minutes of ads from at least eight automakers, from Kia to Jaguar, all of whom will spend millions trying to turn the talk of the dip bowl into actual sales. One automaker, Volkswagen, has set up a "war room" of social media first responders to make sure Twitter and Facebook fills with the proper message about its "Wings" spot.

Last year, automakers bought $92 million of the $292 million worth of Super Bowl advertising time, with the total hitting more than $100 million including the pre- and post-games, according to Kantar Media. Kantar expects the car business to repeat as the biggest ad buyer of Super Bowl time in 2014 for the fourth straight year, with movie studios and dot-com companies following far behind.

That's just the cost of the air space; actual production for the ads can run between $2 million and $10 million per spot, especially with celebrities involved. And while final totals for the this year's game won't be available until after all the ads air, the tally will be higher, with more automakers and an inflation in the price of a 30-second spot can to as much as $6 million.