Turn on your BMW and you might get a movie trailer instead of your usual dashboard. That is what drivers have seen since late July, when the automaker started showing a Spider-Man banner on eligible car displays.
Tap the banner and the main center screen plays a short animated scene while the cabin lighting shifts in sync. Spider-Man swings over a city street, grabs the BMW logo, and a card flashes up telling you the movie is only in cinemas.
The whole sequence is tied to "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," and BMW is calling it a surprise for drivers. The company says several of its cars appear in the film.
The promotion runs in around 70 markets and stays active until August 10 on eligible vehicles built after July 2020. The movie stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, and BMW has worked with Marvel before.
Past tie-ups include "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and "Black Widow." The display feature itself is not new, since BMW has used the same setup for years to send Christmas and New Year greetings, complete with animation, music, and ambient light changes.
The difference is what the ad is for. Those seasonal greetings came from BMW itself.
The Spider-Man spot promotes someone else's movie, and it ends with a film title card. That is a first for a feature BMW previously kept for itself.
BMW's history with entertainment tie-ins goes back decades. In the 1990s, BMWs served as the primary vehicles in three straight James Bond films. BMW has also collaborated with Marvel on "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and "Black Widow." BMW has described the Festive App behind the Spider-Man animation as an optional themed experience, not an advertising platform.
Get the free Always Be Buying eBook and learn the simple system for building wealth on any income
Some drivers are not amused. Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham posted on X that he would never buy a BMW after seeing a clip of the ad.
"I'm never buying a BMW," he wrote in a Tuesday post.
Reddit users in the r/BMW community felt the same way. One called the ad disappointing, another rejected it, and startup investor Sheel Mohnot said it seemed crazy that the movie studio paid BMW to take over the displays of every BMW made after 2020.
"Really cheapens BMW imo," Mohnot said in an X post.
The Spider-Man spot feels different because it asks the driver to sit through someone else's commercial.
In December 2023, BMW senior vice president Stephan Durach said he did not expect BMW to sell in-car screen space for commercials because he considered the cabin "a private space."
BMW told Business Insider that the Festive App behind the Spider-Man animation is meant to offer optional themed animations tied to global and local occasions and is not advertising.
Still, the push lands more than two years after BMW dropped its plan to charge a monthly subscription for heated seats that were already installed.
BMW scrapped that plan in 2023 after a backlash, and executives later admitted they handled the rollout poorly. The heated-seat episode showed how fast drivers can change a company's mind.
The bottom line: your car's screen is becoming a place where companies want to reach you. The dashboard is the new front door, and automakers know it.
For investors, the stakes are simple.
A screen that was once just a map and music player can now deliver a paid message from a movie studio before you back out of the driveway.
If drivers accept that, other car brands may try the same thing, and that could open a new revenue stream for automakers. If the pushback stays loud, expect carmakers to keep these screens for their own messages.
Either way, the next time you start your car, you may face a small question: what are you willing to watch before you drive? The answer will likely decide how much advertising ends up on your dashboard.
Download the free Always Be Buying eBook and start putting your money to work today