You know what would be terrible? Terrible in a sort of dystopian, capitalism-run-amok sort of way? Imagine buying a brand-new, fancy, premium-grade car. From an automaker with a respected name. Like, say, BMW. This is a machine with some status! Let’s say it costs, oh, $61,500, and you’re paying, what, about $1300 a month? Something like that.
Anyway, let’s say you’ve done that, you have your fancy new car you’re dropping over a grand a month on, and then you get in the car one morning, you start it up, and you’re greeted with an ad – a commercial, with visuals and sound – right there on the big screen in the center of your dash.
That would be terrible, right? I mean, hell, even on our little website here, if you just pay a tiny fraction of that car payment a month, we get rid of the ads – so the idea of a carmaker blasting commercials into your car, the car you’re paying for, that sounds miserable. And yet, somehow, it’s true. We’ve seen carmakers like Stellantis do it, and now it appears that BMW is in on this soul-crushing, avaricious bullshit as well. Look at this:
Got this commercial in my car today as part of the Spider-Man – Brand New Day campaign
by
u/Milanista58 in
BMW
What, you are likely inquiring unto the heavens, the fuck is this? And that’s a fantastic question. What’s going on here? Is that actually a full-motion-and-sound advertisement for a Spider-Man movie playing on the center stack screen of that new BMW? Why? How?
Reading the comments, it seems that the ad appears when the car is started, with an option to play it or not being displayed on the screen. I suppose that’s better than it autoplaying, but just barely. It’s still the car taking your time and attention and control of your car’s display to ask if you want to see a damn ad.
I reached out to BMW to get more information about this and to confirm it was actually real, and here is what I was told:
“The in-vehicle animation is part of a broader brand partnership with the film. A few of our vehicles – including the BMW iX3 – were in the film, and a special edition iX3 was featured on the red carpet during last night’s premiere in Los Angeles.”
There was also a link to a BMW press release about this ad campaign, and here is how this in-car ad is described in that release:
Exclusive Spider-Man™ animation available in many BMW vehicles.
To celebrate the partnership with Spider-Man™: Brand New Day, BMW has a special surprise for its drivers. The Spider-Man™ Animation will be available (in participating markets) to all customers with suitably equipped vehicles from 27 July to 10 August. Starting the car brings up a special banner in the Control Display. Clicking on it then activates the Spider-Man™ animation, comprising a full-screen festive animation in the Control Display with aptly chosen backing music and an accompanying light show courtesy of the ambient lighting system. These festive animations will be available in more than 70 countries worldwide for vehicles equipped with the relevant optional equipment and BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9 or BMW Operating System X, as well as a production date after 7/2020.
“Exlusive,” huh? A “special surprise?” So there’s a banner ad that pops up, and then you can choose to play the “festive animation.” Lucky you!
Now, look – fun things are fun. Spider-Man is great! I’ve enjoyed Spider-Man since I was a kid! Hell, I think I was even excited to sit through this drivel just because Spidey was in it:
Man, that was some prime ’70s garbage, but dig that funky soundtrack, right? [Ed Note: Don’t sleep on Japanese Spider-Man. He has a giant robot. – Pete]
Anyway, AMC wasn’t broadcasting the opening for that show into black-and-white CRTs on the dashes of new Pacers over VHF not just because they didn’t have the money or technological know-how to pull that off, but also because nobody fucking wants that.
But now BMW is pumping ads for movies into your car and trying to make it sound like they’re giving you some big treat. I think that’s the part that bothers me the most, the couching of this all like we should be delighted that now there’s another place where we can’t escape the constant onslaught of advertising.
There’s something just so wrong about this all, a company treating the people who have bought their cars as just more marks, more targets to be advertised to, more chances to wring money out of those people unfortunate enough to choose to pay that company for their vehicle.
When you buy a car from BMW, do you actually own that car? I own a house, and I make payments to a mortgage company every month, and I’m pretty sure it would be illegal for that mortgage company to put a fucking Spider-Man billboard in my yard, facing my front windows. Is what BMW is doing any different?
Why is the ownership experience of a BMW the same as taking the cheapest tier of a streaming service, where you have to watch ads? If BMW wants to pump ads into cars, they should cut the price of their cars to compensate for the owner’s time! That’s not free, and I know they know that, because the value of that attention is what they’re charging Marvel for to run these stupid ads.
If you want to watch the trailer for the new Spider-Man movie, I think there’s a metric heptillion places to make that happen. No one needs to have this shoved at them in their cars.
I hate this so much. Maybe beyond rationality. I feel like if I owned a BMW and the car started to show me ads on the dashboard, the temptation to put my hands on the back of that screen and pull forward and down, hard, until I heard that satisfying snap of plastic and watched that screen’s image degrade into a colorful yet meaningless array of vertical lines until going black would be hard to resist.
For the past few years, BMW has behaved in a way that seems to treat their buyers as targets for more revenue over everything else. Remember all their subscription bullshit? People hated that, and worked around it, and eventually BMW had to dial that back, because having a subscription for heated seats makes people want to riot.
And I don’t think this is much better.
We’re being shown ads pretty much everywhere. Online all over the place, at the gas pump, as we drive on roads, when we take public transport, when we shop, when we go for a hike, when we do pretty much anything. A car should be a sanctuary from all this. It’s your car. Your dashboard should show you information about your car, maybe a map, and play the music you want. That’s it. Once ads start showing up there, a sacred covenant between carmaker and owner has been broken.
BMW is breaking this covenant. In response, I would suggest to simply not buy any new BMWs. Get an old Isetta if you want a BMW, but as long as that company sees the interior of their cars as a place to shove ads at a captive audience, fuck ’em.
No one wants this. No one asked for this. Knock it off.
Top graphic images: BMW; Marvel
“Festive animation” is the most German description of an annoying ad ever.
I think this is the angriest I’ve seen our Torch, and I’m here for it.
Not since I saw him yelling at the cloud to get off his lawn. Last week.
C’mon, Jason, get with the times! This is what the Xer’s and Milleners want in their cars, especially if they don’t have to drive them. They crave “entertainment” — anything to distract them for a few seconds. Oh, they’ll feel “something, but the emptiness always comes back. Always.
.
.
.
Always,
I guess you could say BMW’s actions have lit up the Torch
I’m okay with ads for product that I don’t pay anything else for, such as this site, and perhaps some forms of television and YouTube until the ads overwhelm the value I derive from the site, at that point I can do without it (which may be better for my own mental health anyway).
But for things I already own? No thank you. It’s almost assured that if you purchased a BMW and even more so if you leased one that you most likely happily signed a form without reading that apprised you that BMW could advertise to you either their own products, “affiliated” products, or perhaps even ANY products through whatever medium they chose.
Punching the screen or breaking it off and then sending BMW the bill for it? Sure, let me know how that works out for you.
This just puts BMW even harder on the “no, thank you” list for me. Not that I was looking to buy one anytime soon but at least I am able to if I wanted to. Perhaps someone who matters will read this and likely a few other screeds by other websites over the internet and back off like they did on the heated seat debacle but there’ll be some other outrage soon enough. That’s two strikes BMW, do you really want to go for a third?
From the people who want to rent you your heated seats…..
the ad appears when the car is started, with an option to play it or not being displayed on the screen.
That “option” will be taken away soon enough once vehicles are smart enough to know what features drivers want to access and manipulate their behavior. Want to open a app on the infotainment screen or or turn on those seat heaters? Here’s a Liberty Mutual ad first.
Jason how about letting us know if these ads show up upon starting for a test drive. If so every Autopian goes to the local dealer for a test drive. When started up the ad plays and everyone says no way turns off the car and says I want luxury I’m going to Stellantis
I don’t have any vehicle with a screen in it. I am glad to see this article because from what I see the video quality of the screen is shit. I would not buy it just because it sucks I would shoot the salesman or salesgirl who suggested the ads were a benefit. But if people want the tech and don’t want to pay for it the ads are the only answer
The real solution would be for all affected owners to schedule a service appointment for various ‘screen issues’ (but NOT this exact problem). Ensure the car was dropped off for the day and a service loaner was provided. I bet the massive warranty bills from dealers to corporate would get their attention REALLY quick.
The only way to get their attention is to cost them money.
Or cost them something else, maybe in the style of Luigi Mangione. We need more of that sort of thing. .
Really? Kill someone because they made you watch a commercial? You are quite literally the must insane person I have ever read a comment from
And yet you just posted in this very thread “I would shoot the salesman or salesgirl who suggested the ads were a benefit”
I’ve been playing a bit of Victoria 3 lately, so I think it’s safe to say:
+5% of Middle Strata Pops became more radical.
I think my first instinct would be to drive the thing to the dealership and be like, “what the fuck? Make it stop or give me my money back.” I wouldn’t be able to do that though since I can’t use the maps due to the Spidey ad, so I’d probably just drive it into the lake.
“The Gas Station TV is coming from INSIDE THE CAR!”
It’s especially easy to hate BMW for pushing an irritant like this given the lingering stink of their role as OGs of feature-by-subscription chiseling, and it’s no shock that they’re scurrying back to the forefront of monetizing connectivity. But…
…sorry, no buts, Bangle or otherwise. It just sucks.
We no longer “buy” complicated things. We search for a product, choose a brand, punch in a card number, click “agree,” and enter the hell of that particular firm’s CRM.
The inverted corporate sales model in which customers are the product has permeated retail. Selling to the public is now a game of generating attention and gathering data, product be damned. The object that initiated that relationship is profoundly secondary, and maintaining said relationship is subordinate to driving growth. New customers are far more valuable than people who are already bought in, so brands focus hard on finding fresh customers… by all means necessary. Unfortunately pretty much all of those means add up to ads.
Ads are like scam calls. They cast a wide net, bycatch be damned. How many people actually try to buy the commemorative patriotic statuettes or rare skin-disease meds or vaguely sexual Temu mystery objects paraded before them? Not that many, but probably enough.
Think of advertising as if it were mining: It’s gone from blindly drilling holes in the figurative mountain of people’s attention to just blasting it flat. That ultimately might not be the best way for corporations to make money, but it doesn’t seem to be failing them.
The information economy has hideously mutated into a broadband nuisance for consumers, and companies are all-in on it. The only way we’re going to see fewer ads is if something truly game-changing – and probably worse – replaces it.
I’m with you Jason. But instead of pulling the screen, I’d have punched it to oblivion and then sent BMW the bill. Fuck them. It’s pretty sad they just walk into this dystopian bullshit like it’s a setup for a punchline they just don’t get.
I know it’s cliche but I really miss the days when Idiocracy was a comedy. How long until Starbuck’s starts giving lap dances?
Can’t wait!
Given the barristas in Starbucks I’m thinking the money is in getting to pay to not get a lapdance
Without saying anything too potentially objectionable, lets just say mileage may vary…
“YOUR car was in this movie, look, LOOK, do you want to see it?!?!”
It’s like a five-year-old rushing home to show mommy and daddy that he starred in the kindergarten production of Hamilton except it’s cute when a kid does it, not when your soulless hunk of mass-produced German metal and plastic decides to toot its own horn.
Those ads better be cartoons by Bill Plympton or similar.
More and more I’m learning it was a blessing that the 3g cell connection in my i3 went end of life
A Melon was left on the vine to rot, and putrefied the garden.
My BMW has a little Easter egg every Christmas (very fitting), showing some fun unobtrusive graphics for once. It’s pretty nice. But this ad? NO WAY
That’s so luxurious!!
Remember when GM quality was really poor and it meant that Cadillac was out as a luxury brand and forever to be viewed as a low quality, inferior, dare I say American, product? When are we going to allow them to wipe that slate clean and have a good reputation again? Because if this is what the Luxury Germans are doing then it seems worse than almost anything GM could have thought of. No one should escape with a reputation intact if that’s the case.
General Motors may not be doing ads (and, I haven’t checked for sure), but they’re going deep into the kind of software/tech integrations that turn into ads. Over-the-air updates to keep your software-defined vehicle fresh for years to come!
Hi. 2023 X5 owner here. Last month we got a message “BMW has a free gift for you” on the display. We clicked on it for fun, and my wife and I literally LOLed when it was an ad for the NEW X5.
Yesterday we got the message about another “free gift” and decided it wasn’t worth clicking the message. Turns out that was a good choice.
BESURETODRINKYOUROVALTINE
Calling an advert “a gift” is diabolical even by the low standards of digital marketing
Next time the messaging pops up I’ll try to get a video and send it to the Autopian.
I can smell the distracted driving class action coming.
It plays on start up so not when driving probably required by the studio so people were actually watching
Burn it all down.
Fuck. This. Shit.
Spider-Man: No Turn Signal
Just to point out, it’s a running gag throughout the Spider-Man franchise going back at least to the ’70s when Mattel ( or maybe it was Kenner) insisted Stan Lee incorporate a Spider-Mobile into the comics that they could make a toy of, that Peter Parker is a lousy driver if he can drive at all.
I remember that. Yet in the ’60s he had no trouble riding a motorcycle.
If an ad showed up on the dashboard of my $70k car—especially an ad for yet another stupid fucking Marvel movie—I would pull over, set it on fire, and walk home. Okay, I’m not setting it on fire, that’s a little extreme, but I’d be super pissed. I would also take an Uber instead of walking if I was more than two miles away, but still, I’d be very annoyed. But seriously, I would probably just curse the world and keep driving wherever it is I was going, but I’d be awfully miffed.
I almost commented about the movie, but looked it up first and was shocked that it’s apparently a sequel and not yet another reboot with origin story. I swear they made a movie retelling the origin of Spider Man with a different actor every 4 years. I’m not even into comics and I know the damn origin, just get on with it!
I just wish they would use the Marvel/Star Wars/endless reboot cash machines to fund more interesting and less lucrative movies, but I know, I know, that’s not the way making obscene amounts of money works.
Or at least pay to get some decent writers for the stale garbage they’re putting out. They pay the popular actor a fortune to deliver badly written lines (that doesn’t help maintain the actor’s popularity) and an overrated director to do the same mediocre thing they’ve done ten times before when good writing makes up for deficits in either and they pay writers pennies in comparison. Thing is, though, they’ve lost money on a lot of these movies and, when they flop, they lose big because of the size of the budgets involved and they’ll blame everything under the sun before admitting it was largely bad writing. I have no idea why they don’t just hire actual writing talent—those people are not that rare or unavailable.
I would very much like them to fund some Expanded Universe shit like a proper series dedicated to Thrawn.
They skipped all that with the current Spider-Man, luckily