BMW puts a Spider-Man promotion on customer car screens despite its earlier anti-ad stance

The banner appears at start-up

Starting a compatible BMW brings up a special banner on the Control Display promoting the new Spider-Man film. The driver must tap it to launch a full-screen animation with music and, where the car has the necessary equipment, a synchronised ambient-light display.

BMW says the feature is available in participating markets from 27 July to 10 August 2026 and reaches more than 70 countries. It supports BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9 and X, but the vehicle must have been produced after July 2020 and fitted with the relevant optional equipment.

It is therefore not sent to every recent BMW. Eligibility depends on the car’s production date, operating-system generation, equipment and market.

BMW does not call it advertising

In a statement to Business Insider, BMW said the animation sits within its Festive App, which provides optional themed animations and messages linked to global and local occasions. The company said the feature was not a form of advertising.

That description does not remove the tension. The animation promotes a Sony Pictures film, combines BMW and Spider-Man branding and ends with a cinema-release message. Drivers can ignore the animation, but they still see the film-promoting banner on the car’s main display at start-up.

In practical terms, it is a promotional banner leading to an optional branded animation. BMW does not force the driver to watch the full-screen sequence, but it does place a commercial message for a partner’s film inside the vehicle interface.

The campaign does not, by itself, prove that BMW sold Sony Pictures display inventory in the conventional advertising-industry sense. It does, however, make the company’s attempt to draw a firm distinction between a themed experience and an advertisement difficult to sustain.

BMW’s earlier position sounded very different

In December 2023, Stephan Durach, then BMW Group’s senior vice-president for Connected Company Development, said the company had no plans to sell advertising on its in-car screens.

Speaking at a MediaPost roundtable, Durach described the car as a person’s last private space and said he could not see BMW selling the display to play a commercial. Against that statement, the Spider-Man campaign looks like a reversal in practice, or at least a much narrower interpretation of what BMW considers advertising.

The technical capability changes the ownership experience

The campaign demonstrates that BMW can add branded content to the interface of compatible vehicles after delivery. A single promotion can span several generations of operating system and coordinate the central display, audio system and ambient lighting.

For customers, the central issue is control. A premium-car buyer can reasonably expect the start-up screen to prioritise vehicle functions, safety messages and services the driver has chosen to use. A banner promoting a third-party film blurs that boundary even when the full animation remains optional.

The technology itself is not the problem. Connected software can add useful functions, improve existing features and keep a car current. The concern is whether the manufacturer continues to treat the display primarily as part of the customer’s vehicle or increasingly as a communications channel it retains the right to programme after handover.

BMW’s earlier digital-services controversy makes the issue more sensitive

The episode recalls BMW’s heated-seat Functions on Demand offer in some markets. The company dropped the subscription option in 2023 after limited customer acceptance.

Pieter Nota, then the BMW board member responsible for sales and marketing, said customers felt they were paying twice to activate hardware already installed in the vehicle. BMW disputed that interpretation but accepted that customer perception had undermined the offer. It continued developing paid software and connected services where it believed buyers saw clearer value.

The Spider-Man banner is not a subscription, does not charge the owner and does not lock a vehicle function behind a paywall. The earlier controversy still matters because both cases touch the same underlying question: how much continuing control should a manufacturer retain over hardware, software and screens after the customer has taken delivery?

BMW is not the only manufacturer experimenting in Europe

Stellantis has also introduced partner content into connected-car interfaces. In 2025 it announced a collaboration with 4screen to bring location-based services, offers, promotions and points of interest to selected Fiat, Jeep and Ram models equipped with Uconnect 4 or Uconnect 5.

The service is being rolled out in Europe and North America. It places contextual business information in the navigation interface and allows drivers to filter the types of locations shown. Stellantis presents it as a convenience feature designed around customer preferences, while the platform also gives participating businesses a route into the vehicle display.

For European car buyers, the digital user experience is therefore becoming part of the ownership calculation. Comparing powertrains, chassis tuning, warranties and equipment is no longer enough. Buyers increasingly need to know what content a manufacturer can add later, what controls are available and whether promotional material can be disabled.

A small campaign raises a large question of principle

The Spider-Man campaign is temporary, ending on 10 August, and the full-screen animation requires a deliberate tap. It is not an automatically playing video that takes over the display without user input.

The principle nevertheless remains important. BMW is using the start-up screen of customers’ cars to present a commercial message for a partner’s film, despite a senior executive having described the cabin and display environment as private space less than three years earlier.

BMW’s technical capability is impressive. From a user-experience perspective, however, it creates value only when the customer retains clear and meaningful control over what appears on the screen. For a premium brand, preserving trust matters more than the visibility generated by a short-lived film campaign.