Annoying Adverts Could Soon Blight Your Car's Media Screen

Who doesn't love the constant barrage of advertising in the modern world? Apart from everyone, that is? Too bad, because adverts are coming to cars whether we like it or not

Matt Kimberley

Updated: 10 Jan 2018

Annoying Adverts Could Soon Blight Your Car's Media Screen

What’s your absolute favourite thing about the Internet? It’s the adverts, right? And your favourite thing about TV? Also the adverts. I knew it. Gosh darn it, we all just love those adverts.

That’s great news, because soon adverts could start being channelled straight to the screens in your own car – or else you’ll be charged more money to use connected-car services. Wonderful.

A tech company called Telenav has announced an ‘in-car advertising platform’ that would basically hijack your infotainment system with ads whenever you’re stationary and trying to use connected services. You know when you’re playing a mobile game and you’re constantly bombarded with gameplay-incentivised ads that get you an extra life or double the reward? We all have nothing but love for those ads, right?

The company’s hellish plans involve making you pay more for services if you don’t watch the adverts. A red-irised spokesperson for Telenav, who presumably concealed their horns within a large hat, claimed that the approach would “help car makers offset costs related to connected services such as wireless data, content, software and cloud services.”

Can’t we all just use our smartphones, given that we already pay for the data and service provision? Yes, of course we can. If we want to find something to eat we can already look that up by stopping at the roadside.

Telenav’s CEO, who we imagine to be staring hungrily at our wallets while saying this, said the system is “an exciting new opportunity… to monetise connectivity to cover service costs and even drive healthy profits while enriching the consumer experience with safely-delivered, engaging and relevant offers.”

We’ll still pass, thanks. This sounds like all the reason we could ever need to avoid fully Internet-connected cars altogether.

Source: Silicon Beat

Comments

So what you’re saying is, if I bought a brand new £100k M5 I would be bombared with adverts even though I just parted with a huge sum of money. I doubt many manufacturers would do this as it would simply turn away potential customers

let natural selection take its course. Nobody will pay for the car only to pay for it monthly for extra basic options. No customers, they will die on their own.

I like old cars, my car hasn’t ever advertised anything to me except that sexy look

Yeah

That wrx dash tho!

Cars are safer now, they alert you when you are distracted, so what it the next step? Let’s make an another distraction. Brilliant!

Good luck with that. There’s many reasons I don’t do cars built after 2000 and I’ll be sure to add this to the list.

“Connected car services” have always been useless in the world of mobile phones. This just puts the final nail in the coffin. The only time I’ve ever gotten a touch screen in a car is when its included as standard, else I never bother.