Top News

If you own a BMW built after July 2020, you may recently have noticed an option on the centre screen to play a video highlighting the company’s tie-up with Sony Pictures’ new film Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Even if you do not own one, you have probably seen that same clip online over the past few days, as part of a week-long backlash over what is essentially an in-car advertisement. The outrage is somewhat over the top for something that is not actually very new, but it is still a discussion worth having.

This sort of in-car advertising, where a carmaker treats a branding arrangement as part of a broader partnership with an entertainment property, is far from new. BMW’s version—which, despite how some people have described it online, does not auto-play and instead must be opened manually by selecting it at start-up—is in fact one of the less intrusive examples.

Tesla, for example, teamed up with the 2025 box-office flop Tron: Ares for an update that could rebrand the navigation screen with references to the poorly received Jared Leto film. Mercedes has also regularly done similar tie-ins around The Masters, the golf tournament that has long counted the German carmaker among its small group of sponsors. Even though Masters broadcasts are often praised for having relatively few commercial interruptions, Mercedes heavily integrated the tournament into cars equipped with Hyperscreen interfaces by pushing images of the Augusta National course across the full-width screens in 2025.

I was reviewing a Mercedes-Maybach SL680 during this year’s tournament, and even that top-end model showed the Masters logo on its huge screen at start-up. Thankfully, switching it off was simple; an in-menu toggle labelled “graphical goodies” removed the theme with a single click. The Tesla integration was also an optional mode.

Even so, people dislike these features less for what they literally are and more for what they symbolise: however you present them, they are still advertisements being delivered into cars owned or leased by individuals who, like most people, are unlikely to be eager to watch Tron: Ares any time soon. As with BMW’s limited rollout of subscriptions for basic vehicle functions a few years ago, the issue is not so much this exact feature as the broader, more depressing extensions of the same idea that could come later. Put simply, the Spider-Man ad should not really be a major issue for anyone actually driving one of these BMWs.

At the same time, the very premise is irritating enough that it remains worth criticising as though it truly did matter. This is the kind of idea that is best shut down now, before our car screens turn into a Fortnite-like jumble of licensed characters and limited-time offers. Sony Honda Mobility’s Afeela already offered a glimpse of that future, and display models in its short-lived showrooms even had a Fortnite logo rotating on a screen placed between the headlights.

Drivers were spared the sight of privately owned cars effectively advertising video games on the road when SHM dropped its plans to actually sell Afeela models, but ads for battle royale shooters could make their way into cars again at any time. By objecting to an optional Spider-Man clip now, perhaps we can avoid far more annoying promotions in the future.