BMW Owners Upset Over Surprise Spider-Man Ads

BMW pushed a Spider-Man: Brand New Day animation straight into owners’ central Control Displays, and many of them say they were never asked first. The clip was baked into BMW’s native infotainment software and ran from July 27 to August 10 in more than 70 countries, a rollout Hollywood trade coverage, including The Hollywood Reporter, tracked alongside the film’s broader marketing blitz.

Screenshots have been circulating as owners call the pop up intrusive and compare it to ad supported gadgets they never signed up for. BMW describes the clip as a festive Spider-Man animation delivered through its Festive App and part of a wider Sony and Marvel tie in, and it insists this does not count as advertising, but plenty of drivers reject that distinction when a movie promotion appears in a car they already paid for.

BMW Owners React To Surprise Spider-Man Ads

Owners say a premium car should not double as a billboard, and many describe the startup banner as dystopian the first time it appeared on the main screen. Forum threads and social posts describe people digging through menus trying to stop it from coming back, even though the clip is confined to the infotainment display rather than the dedicated BMW dashboard warning and alert system.

BMW repeats the same line in replies to outlets, calling the in car clip a festive animation tied to the Spider-Man partnership instead of an advertisement under its own definition. Owners are not accepting that framing, especially with the movie’s marketing push driven by Sony and Marvel on top of BMW’s brand work.

The timing stings. In 2023, senior BMW executive Stephan Durach publicly described the cabin and its screens as a private space and said BMW had no plans to sell advertising there, and critics now point to that quote as they watch a third party movie promotion arrive on the Control Display two years later.

What Showed Up In BMW Infotainment Screens

The sequence starts with a bright “Surprise!” banner about a Spider-Man animation in the car, and tapping it launches a roughly 19 second full screen clip where Spider-Man vaults over a BMW as music plays and the ambient lighting syncs with the video.

The banner went out to suitably equipped vehicles built after July 2020 running BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9 or X, as long as the Festive App was available, and BMW and independent reports describe it as a short, optional animation that runs when a driver taps the prompt on the Control Display rather than something that hijacks the warning cluster or forces itself to play while driving.

Should automakers need explicit opt in before running third party movie promotions on a screen drivers paid thousands of dollars to sit behind?

Motor1’s Take: The episode underlines a simple truth: owners see the cabin as private, not ad space. When promotions land without clear consent, trust frays and brand goodwill takes a hit.