Here's the thing. BMW has a senior vice president on record saying, in December 2023, 'To say I'm selling the screen to play a commercial — I don't see it.' That was Stephan Durach, the company's connected-company SVP. Less than three years later, BMW began pushing banner ads for Spider-Man: Brand New Day — a Sony Pictures release — onto the main Control Display of eligible vehicles, starting July 27th.
The rollout covers more than 70 countries and targets any BMW built after July 2020 running Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or X. That is a lot of cars. Tapping the banner launches a 19-second full-screen animation of Spider-Man swinging around BMW's iX3 electric SUV, complete with music and, if your car has ambient lighting, a synchronized light show. The ad runs through August 10th. There is no skip button on the banner itself.
The backlash was immediate. 'Paying 50-100k for a car, yet still getting ADs,' one Reddit user wrote, according to the New York Post. 'Next we need adblocker for cars.' Another commenter put it more bluntly: 'F–k these a–holes selling cars to people THAT BMW still OWNs.'
Consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org and a former assistant Massachusetts attorney general who worked in consumer protection, told the New York Post that 'drivers don't expect to be subjected to video advertising in the privacy of their own car and they shouldn't be.' He added that he expects owners 'to voice their displeasure loud and clear at this unexpected and unwelcome source of intrusive advertising.'
For context on the scale of the campaign: Deadline valued the Sony Pictures marketing push for Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $309 million in worldwide media exposure, which the New York Post described as an all-time Hollywood record. The film opened with roughly $932 million in global ticket sales. A Sony Pictures spokesperson told the New York Post that 'you would need to talk to BMW as we can't speak about their car designs.'
BMW confirmed the ads to The Autopian, calling them part of 'a broader brand partnership' and describing the animations as 'festive.' This is the same company that previously attempted to charge a monthly subscription fee for heated seats already physically installed in the vehicle.
Read the changelog. What BMW is doing here is a straightforward property rights problem. A customer pays six figures for a machine, takes possession of it, and the manufacturer retains enough software control to rent the dashboard to a third-party advertiser without the owner's consent. That is not a feature. It is a firmware-delivered claim on private property. The free-market case against this isn't complicated: when a company sells you a product, the transaction should end there. Using an over-the-air update to monetize attention inside a vehicle the customer already owns corrodes the very concept of ownership — and no amount of 'festive animations' rebranding changes what it actually is.
