Remember earlier this year when people with Jeeps and other Stellantis products were complaining about how they were getting pop-up ads on their center stack infotainment screens, like filthy animals? And they were having trouble opting out of these miserable ads? Then a Stellantis representative told me that the lack of ability to opt out was just a glitch! It’ll get taken care of! But you know what wasn’t a glitch? The ads themselves.
Here’s the thing about getting pop-up ads on your car’s dashboard: nobody wants them. In fact, I can’t think of anything that might unite humanity more in these wildly divided times than the notion that not getting pop-up ads on your car’s infotainment screen is better, vastly, richly better, than getting stupid ads on there.
Nobody wants these. Pop-up ads on your car’s dashboard are about as appreciated as small, runny piles of feces are on your car’s dashboard. If there is someone out there who genuinely, honestly enjoys and appreciates getting pop-up ads on their car’s infotainment screen then I hope they’re somewhere safe, because there must be an army of scientists just itching to strap this hypothetical person down to an operating table and cut them open just to figure out what the fuck is wrong with them.
And yet, somehow, Stellantis is still trying to make this happen. Here’s a recent tweet from some poor afflicted Stellantis owner, showing a recent pop-up ad on a Ram 1500:
This is a real photo from a friend pic.twitter.com/PU8xcd1qt2
— A GMN Ape (@AGMNApe) November 17, 2025
The ad is euphemistically titled “Marketing Notification,” which just somehow makes this even worse, picking some other inane words that just mean “ad.” It’s like calling stubbing your toe a “extremity nerve testing opportunity.” It’s not helping.
And what is this ad for, even? $1,500 in “bonus cash” if you own a Stellantis car and want to buy a new Jeep? Is this working for anyone? Just seeing this miserable ad pop up would be enough for me to cross Jeep of my list, even if I was, say, a Fiat driver who wanted a new car. I’d love to know the numbers for how well this ad actually performs, because it is so far beyond my ability to imagine anyone seeing this and squealing in delight before poking that OK button with gusto. And I can imagine a lot of things, not all of them depraved, even.
Chrysler too pic.twitter.com/A3Yn1Obj8c
— The Net Guy Reviews (@TheNetGuyDotCom) November 18, 2025
Other people have replied showing the ad appearing on other Stellantis brands, like this Chrysler, which uses a much smaller typeface and you can see the strange choice to center-justify everything even more clearly.
I reached out to Stellantis to try and get some understanding of what is happening here; is this normal? Is this another odd glitch, or is this just part of owning a Stellantis product now? Here’s the response I got:
The In-Vehicle Message (IVM) technology in the Uconnect system is an important link that helps Stellantis stay in contact with our owners at critical points in their ownership. We use IVM to alert them to important messages, such as exclusive sales offers, vehicle recalls and vehicle health monitor alerts.
Recently, a select group of owners received a special marketing notification in their vehicle and we tailored this special offer to minimize any intrusions:
We acknowledge that not every owner is interested in special offers. Owners can always permanently opt out of in-vehicle marketing messages by calling Customer Care at 800-777-3600.
“Our goal is to deliver the best vehicle experience for our customers. As a result of these efforts, we have seen our customers take advantage of this offer.”
…and I guess I’ll take Stellantis at their word here, but these two bits are pretty hard to swallow.
The really important part is that if you just want to never get stupid ads like these again, you have to actually call their Customer Care department, which feels like how a gym makes you come in to cancel a membership. Stellantis very likely could have made this easy, a little button right on the screen to opt out, but it seems they chose not to, because it would be better for them if they made this process a little bit more difficult.
It’s maddening.
Here’s the opt-out number again, in case you missed it:
800-777-3600
I just don’t get Stellantis’ thinking here. It’s not like they’re doing so great as it is; you would think that any chance they have to not alienate customers would be an opportunity they’d take. Nobody wants pop-up ads on their dash. No one is asking for this. Seeing these ads just makes the world feel like a worse place, a miserable dystopia of commerce and avarice, and our cars should be havens from this kind of horseshit.
Do we already not get enough spam in our emails, our text messages, via phone calls, and in our physical mail? Have you no empathy? Do we really need to debase our own cars with this? Is it so much to ask to just not do this?
I’d encourage Stellantis to take a moment and really consider their actions here. Is this who you want to be? Are whatever short-term gains made with these ads really worth making your customers feel like driving their cars into lakes?
I don’t think so. At the very least, let people opt out on-screen. No one wants to call Customer Care and wait on hold and go through all that hassle. Come on. Be human.
Top graphic images: Stellantis; SPAM
The Chrysler one is annoying enough but it’s borderline comical how huge the Jeep font is.
Another reason not to retrofit a screen into an older car.
UPDATE: Grand Cherokee owner here. Called the number. Sat on hold for ten minutes. Rep then told me that she cannot disable the ads. I have to go to the trash Uconnect website, create an account, and disable ads there. Tried that. There’s no option to disable (or I can’t find it).
I hope this fiasco generated a lot of new sales for Stellantis – this customer is gone forever.
Any company that adds pop-up ads to expensive hardware after you’ve already purchased it should be forced to offer the option to sell it back to them at full retail price, tax and all.
All groups are select groups.
I defy you to name a group that isn’t.
Yep, cold calls, solicitations at home, trying to hand me something in a store or parking lot, all result in me specifically not choosing that vendor/service/product.
If I’m browsing the internet or what not that’s usually fine, generally it’s flagged me from my searches for car stuff or video games and I’ve actually bought some things that way, but I can also just scroll past those.
“we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures”
That’s quote from Ready Player One, which despite the hate the other day, I still say was a fun movie. It was a classic 80s style teenager-against-the-big-corporation theme, with some light social commentary.
Not Shawshank, but definitely on the “Good” side of the bell-curve compared to a lot of the other regurgitated-IP coming out lately.
This thing is basically dangerous…
While your attention is concentrated on getting rid of that plain nuisance so that the screencan go back to more important stuff like say : navigation. you are not concentrating your attention onn driving your car.
From the story:
> it only appears on startup, before you start to drive
Still horse manure, but not dangerous.
Horse manure preferable to humanure.
I get mad enough at the warning screen on my Jeep that tells me every time I start it to “not look here and don’t run into something and sue us because you were looking here” (or something). I can only imagine how pissed I would be to see an add also. I get it, you don’t like it when customers sue you, but come on – after 3 years of seeing this screen every day, can’t I opt out?
Should probably carry a center punch to permanently disable screens that foist advertisements upon me!
I get in my car and leave for another gas station every time I see a pump play ads.
I mean, it’s incredibly unlikely (ok, it’s never gonna happen) that I would ever buy a Stellantis product, so their fuckery is more amusing than maddening. But just in case some other automobile stakeholder with decision making authority is abooooot:
This is a partial list of my car deal breaker list
You will also have Android auto for those of us who are too cheap, poor, or anti-Apple.
Or who simply smugly appreciate the superiority of our Pixel devices.
I’m OK with subscriptions for things that have ongoing costs. Basically anything that actually needs some sort of data link to function. Built-in navigation and remote control via a smartphone even when the car’s not within range of your home wifi? Yeah, sure, charge a subscription fee for that. Local functionality like keychain fob remote control or seat heaters? Absolutely not.
Jason — I know it’s not the point of your rant, but to address your puzzlement about the center-justified text: bizarre and inconsistent formatting is a hallmark of the UConnect system. It’s how Stellantis reminds their customers how much they care.
I got a cold call from a local real estate company, oh probably about 10 years ago. I will never contact them when we sell or buy a house. I decided to go ahead and start a questionaire offered by our TV provider just for yucks. At the first question I knew what was coming, nothing but a come-on to change cell phone provider to their partner. They showed a commercial and wanted to know what I thought. My response was simply “I hate all advertisements”, I then quit the questionaire.
Incidentally, because it was incomplete, it probably got removed from their data set.
I wonder if their data is only from the people who love these things enough to finish them, and therefore, are the people who also appreciate advertising?
On the other hand, people are talking about Stellantis! There’s no such thing as bad publicity!
With each passing month i become more convinced that there will soon be a cap on the model year of car I am willing to buy.
Mine ends at 2013 inclusive.
Preach it Torch!
A local fuel distributor and convenience store Sheetz spams members at least once a day here in PA but at least they give 3 cents off a gallon at every fill up. As for exclusive offers I am sure as a non Stellantis owner I could go on any dealership of theirs and negotiate more than $1500 off. I guess Stellantis knows their customers are suckers for a bad deal on a bad car. For my money I’d willingly walk arm in arm with Bernie and AOC to pass legislation banning advertising in vehicles unless you get a written approval from the customer in a separate from the sales contract.
I am surprised they didn’t bring back the automatic seatbelts to trap you while showing the ads like in the aclockwork orange movie
“Please select every box that shows a STELLANTIS Product in order to continue.”
Or just shout “McDonalds!”
Things like this make me sad. It reminds me that our only real value to our country is to buy stuff.
If they said “you are literally a captive audience when you get in your car, and we want to exploit that for profit”, I’d kinda respect them. But this “Our goal is to deliver the best vehicle experience” horseshit is just maddening
The absurd gaslighting companies do on stuff like this is maddening.
I’m surprised they didn’t bring back the automatic seatbelts to hold you captive while showing the ads. Like that old movie from the 70s
Why stop there? Have little clips descend from the headliner to keep your eyes permanently open like at the end of A Clockwork Orange. 🙂