BMW is facing swift criticism from drivers after pushing a Spider-Man movie advertisements directly to dashboard infotainment screens. Picture: RONNY HARTMANN / AFP
New BMW owners were left fuming last week after their vehicles' dashboard screens prompted them to watch a trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day movie—marking a deeply frustrating escalation in the controversial trend of in-car digital advertising.
While commercial displays inside modern automobiles have been quietly expanding for a while, pop-up notifications appearing across BMW models manufactured after July 2020 quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons.
The unwanted promo stems directly from a multi-million-dollar cross-promotional partnership between BMW, Sony Pictures, and Marvel Studios.
The explicit goal of the campaign was to highlight the German automaker's prominent product placement throughout the superhero blockbuster, where high-end BMWs feature heavily in the action.
